


The Alteration

by Derin



Series: Parting the Clouds [15]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 28,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5538512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The yeerks are doing something in the ocean, and the Animorphs need to figure out what. But no scouting mission has been this tense, Trapped among their enemies in a base underwater guarded by oddly intelligent sharks, with their morphing abilities limited and no way to know how long it'll be before they can get home again, this would be a near-impossible mission even if Tobias wasn't still getting accustomed to morphing and Marco was thinking clearly. </p><p>But it gets worse: Visser One is back, And she's brought with her a new enslaved species; Leerans. Mind readers. One misstep, and the Animorphs have no secrets left. But it seems that Marco knows a few of the Visser's secrets himself...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, have some traumatised children.

My name is Cassie.

My life veers wildly between 'way too exciting' and 'not exciting in the slightest'.

My gaze strayed once again to the letters scrawled on my arm. I knew I should be paying attention. But I was so _bored_.

The letters were a little faded with time. A/TCJMR. _Ax/Tobias, Cassie, Jake, Marco, Rachel. Ax/Tobias, Cassie, Jake, Marco, Rachel_. It had become somewhat of a mantra, the puzzle I couldn't crack.

Thought-speak range.

There were many, many things that seemed to affect our ability to thought-speak. Emotional state. Level of control over the morph. The weather, it seemed. And some of us could speak to each other over longer distances than we could with others – all other things considered, I could reach Rachel at almost forty feet farther away than I could reach Marco. But even taking all of those things into consideration, under the same conditions, there was a definite order to our range. Tobias and Ax had the longest. Rachel had the shortest. Why?

It could have to do with practice. Rachel wasn't the talkiest person in battle, and Tobias and Ax spoke in thought-speak by default. But Marco's constant babbling in the face of danger should easily push him up above Jake and myself. It might be a 'time spent in thought-speak-capable form' thing, which would also explain why Ax and Tobias were so high on the list, and I did spent a lot of time practicing morphs to figure out the limits of the power. But I knew for a fact that Rachel spent a lot of her free time flying about with Tobias, so unless Jake and Marco were up to a lot of morphing shenanigans that I didn't know about...

Somebody cleared their throat pointedly, directing my attention back to the task at hand. I looked up.

“You just reverse-engineer the equation to get the answer,” Natalie explained. “Whatever you do to one side of the equation, you do to the other, until one side is a known quantity and the other the variable.”

We were in my room, sitting on my bed with math books splayed open between us. Natalie was a compromise with my parents, a last-ditch effort to raise my grades beyond downright embarrassing. A tutor.

I could see their point. They were both intelligent, driven veterinarians. They knew I loved animals and would love to follow in their footsteps, and they knew that my grades weren't even close to allowing that to happen. They were probably worried I was going to become a hobo or something. And from their point of view, it had to look like I just didn't care about my future, didn't care about my grades. Which was true, in a way. I was part of a small group of teens who had absolutely no reason to be concerned about future job prospects. Hooray. It was after yet another iteration of the 'twice as good for half the respect' speech, followed by brief concern that I'd stopped seeing Dr Johnson, that I agreed to a tutor. But with careful timing and calling the right people, I was at least able to make sure I got the right tutor.

Natalie looked about seventeen, with brown hair that she wore in twin plaits and a few pimples still hidden among her freckles. I say 'looked' because she most definitely was not seventeen. Natalie was a chee, which meant that she was at least centuries, and possibly millennia, old. She'd been recommended by Erek, who still owed us some pretty massive favors after the whole Pemalite Crystal fiasco.

“Naturally, you need to apply the changes in order, and to the whole side of the equation,” Natalie continued. “See how everything here is divided by two? You have to multiply by two first. And you have to multiply everything on the other side by two.”

“This must be really boring for you,” I said. “Going through high school over and over again. It must be so repetitive.”

“Not as much as you'd think,” she shrugged. “It's interesting to note how human educational systems change over time. And since I spent my last couple of lifetimes in China, America didn't even teach algebra last time I was here.”

“Still, though. So much high school.”

“I was a farmer in the nineteen hundreds,” Natalie countered. “You know what I did with my time? I ploughed soil. With a hoe. Then things grew out of that soil, and I cut them from the ground. Then I ploughed the soil again. Every year. Believe me, high school is a nice break.”

“You could've been a... a queen or something, if you wanted.”

“We try to stay away from high-profile roles. Too much attention, too dangerous. Although I _did_ have to flee England with my wife after I got drafted into an army one time. That was pretty exciting. And if you're just trying to distract me from algebra, need I remind you that you're the one who needs these meetings, not me.”

That was true enough. “Don't you guys have some kind of... knowledge beam or something?” I grumbled, turning back to the book.

“In fact we do. Chee-net. It would work perfectly on you if you were a chee. But since you're both biological, and an alien, I'm afraid we're reduced to the old-fashioned method of knowledge transfer.” She tapped the page with one long, manicured, holographic nail. “So we multiply by two. What then?”

“Cassie?” My mother's voice called from the kitchen. “Phone.”

Natalie hissed through her teeth in irritation. Or at least, her hologram did. “I might as well just go home, mightn't I?”

“It might just be a two-minute thing,” I said in the doorway.

“Five dollars says that it is your friend Marco, and he wants to see you immediately.”

Marco? If it was an Animorph thing, it'd be Jake. Maybe Rachel. Marco and I didn't really have a relationship outside the Animorphs, so it'd be suspicious if he called me. The yeerks probably weren't bugging random phones, but you never knew.

“You're on,” I said. I headed into the kitchen and took the phone from my mom. “Hello?”

“Hi, Cassie. The enviro group needs to have an emergency meeting to talk about replenishing our supply of Birkenstocks and re-evaluate our tree hugging quota. Are you free?”

I caught Natalie's eye as she walked past on her way out. She gave me a cheerful little wave and I sighed. “Sure, Marco. Barn, twenty minutes?”

“Can you alert the out-of-towners? I'll get the others.”

“Sure. See you then.”

“Right, later.” I hung up the phone and sighed again. Looked like I was out five dollars to an immortal alien dog robot that probably had no need for money.

But on the plus side, I didn't have to do algebra.


	2. Chapter 2

I fetched Ax and Tobias for the meeting and then used the time waiting for the others to arrive to get some of my chores done. Tobias stayed in his hawk body, but Ax has to morph human to come to our meetings in case my dad walked in on us, so I got him to help me. He held supplies for me while I bandaged an eagle's wing. Tobias glared at it suspiciously from the rafters. Hawks and eagles don't get along. I always made sure to release such animals far from his territory, but he seemed to resent their existence on principle. Ax lacked not only my experience dealing with animals, but the unspoken understanding that every human has of basic animal biology by virtue of simply living in an animal body, so without training he wasn't a particularly good assistant, but he was capable of basic cleaning tasks and had enough sense not to try and eat the drugs. He _did_ try to eat the scrub we used to clean the benches, but only once.

Rachel arrived first, by bike, because it might look kind of weird if Animorphs were constantly in the barn but never seen to actually arrive or leave. We did have a stash of emergency clothing for everyone in case somebody needed to fly over and look somewhat normal, but it was best to leave that for, well, emergencies. Besides, Rachel had lost most of her clothing in the house collapse a couple of months ago and seemed to take the loss as some kind of personal challenge levelled at her by the universe, which she answered by recovering her wardrobe as quickly and enthusiastically as possible. Apart from her morphing outfit, I don't think I'd seen her wear the same thing twice since then. She beat Marco and Jake, dropped off by Jake's dad, by only a few minutes.

“So,” Marco said when we were all together, “you guys remember the chee?”

“The alien robots who bailed on helping us fight the yeerks at the last minute?” Rachel asked. “Yeah, I'm pretty sure we all remember the chee.”

“I ran into Erek at the mall today. He says the yeerks are up to something big. They've been building an underwater facility, out in the ocean, near this private island. Erek knows where but he doesn't know why.” He glanced at Jake. “Visser One is coming to inspect the facility.”

That got our attention. It got our attention so quickly that I had no time to ruminate on the fact that Natalie had obviously cheated.

“Visser One? Must be important,” Rachel said.

<The last time we saw her, we nearly died,> Tobias pointed out.

“True,” Marco said, “but she was the one who saved us. Apparently she's supposed to be overseeing the invasion of some planet called Leera, so if this is bringing her to Earth, it must be big.”

Ax spun to stare at Marco, and nearly fell over. “The yeerks are invading Leera?” he asked with a sudden urgency that immediately lost its effect when he continued with “Leeeeera. Leeera-ra-ra.”

“So the yeerks are invading other planets at the same time?” Rachel asked.

“The yeerk forces.... force-es-suh... are not all on Earth,” Ax pointed out, as if that was obvious. “They are too vast for that.”

“So not only is this probably important enough to warrant our attention in any case,” I reasoned, “but it might offer another opportunity to drive a political wedge between Visser Three and his superior. Which, if she's invading another planet, might restrict his access to resources and affect the war here. But would that hurt this... Leera?”

“Are you asking whether we should back off on protecting our planet to make things easier on some random aliens we don't know on a planet we've never heard of?” Marco asked.

“The important thing,” Jake cut in, “is that we need to see what's going on on this base, why it's important, and what we can do about it. Where is this base, exactly?”

Marco pulled out a small map and pointed. There was our own coast, which I recognised only because it was clearly labelled, a lot of ocean with a couple of stray islands and soforth, and a little star drawn in red pen near a small mass labelled 'Royan Island'. It was far out. Really far.

“That'd take hours to swim to,” Rachel said. “I'm not looking forward to demorphing in the ocean a couple of times.”

“We've done it before,” Marco shrugged. “We had to go out quite far to find Ax, remember?”

Marco had been literally bitten in half when we went to find Ax. And then nearly killed by one of Visser Three's water morphs. And he couldn't swim. And his mom had drowned more than a year ago. I shot him a sharp look, but his only expression was one of determination.

<You guys all have seagull morphs,> Tobias pointed out, <and I can get one fairly easily. You would still have to demorph in the water, but gulls are pretty fast when gliding over waves.>

Demorphing in the water still wasn't great, especially for Marco, Tobias and Ax, but at least flying would be better than swimming. But something was bugging me. Travel...

“How are they feeding?” I asked. “I mean, there must be a lot of Controllers out there. Are they shipping them to shore every few days? Do they have their own yeerk pool out there, in the base or on this private island? Can they feed in the ocean?”

<Yeerks could survive in the ocean, provided nothing eats them,> Tobias said, <but they wouldn't be able to pick up all their nutrients there. Kandrona rays can be picked up easily, but there are secondary nutrients that require Kandrona stabilisation that just don't exist in the ocean.>

Ax looked at him in surprise. “How do you know that?”

<Elfangor told me. Before he died, he... look, this isn't important right now. The important thing is that it's not difficult for the yeerks to synthesise the components of a yeerk pool themselves, provided they have access to Kandrona rays. So if they have an artificial Kandrona emitter out there, then they probably have their own pool.>

Ax looked over the map. “Assuming their current Kandrona is the same size as the one we destroyed, the emitter in the city would not reach that far.”

“But they might have spares,” Jake pointed out. “If my food source were destroyed and it killed off a good chunk of my forces, I'd make sure I had spares from then on. I bet they started producing extras as soon as we broke the one in the EGS tower.”

“Kandrona emitters are difficult and expensive for yeerks to make,” Ax said. “May-kuh. But given their importance, you may be right.”

“Right,” I said. Without really thinking about it, I tore a piece of blank paper from one of our barn notebooks and found a pen. “Possibility one: they're shipping Controllers back here every few days.”

“Or to the Pool ship,” Ax said.

“Or to the Pool ship,” I agreed. “Possibility two: they have their own Kandrona and pool on the base. Possibility three: the Kandrona that supports the pool here also supports the one on the base.”

“I don't think it's number two,” Rachel said.

<Why not?> Tobias asked.

“Because then they could put the base wherever they wanted. Why would they put it in the one part of the world where andalite bandits keep harassing them? That's like asking for it to be blown up.”

“Possibility four,” I added, “this is an extremely elaborate trap, and we're supposed to blow it up.” But Rachel was right. “So you're saying that they need to be close to this pool, or they wouldn't be here? Could we therefore also conclude that they don't have any other pools on Earth?”

“I don't think we can,” Jake said. “We don't know what this base is for. Maybe they also have pools in China or something, but they need resources here.”

<If they need the resources in a very specific site, then all this musing about yeerk pools is meaningless,> Tobias added.

“Bottom line, we need to investigate this base,” Marco said. “Find out what they're doing.”

“If they are using the pool in town,” I said thoughtfully, “then they'll be shuttling people back and forth. We could try to get on that transport.”

“That's probably more dangerous than just flying out,” Marco said. “I'd rather demorph in the ocean than in a boat or plane full of Controllers.”

<If it's a plane, it wouldn't be a two-hour trip,> Tobias pointed out, <but then, it would take a while to actually find where they're launching from, and find a way to sneak on.>

“And if this base is important enough to pull Visser One away from this Leera invasion, then the yeerks won't be taking any chances with security,” Rachel added.

Ax was looking troubled. Jake noticed, too.

“What's wrong, Ax?” he asked.

“Nothing, Prince Jake,” he replied. “Leera simply seems like a strange target for the yeerks. It would be very difficult for them to conquer the Leerans. The war may be progressing faster than I thought.”

Sometimes, I forgot that Ax's concerns weren't as closely tied to Earth as ours were. He probably had friends out still fighting the yeerks in space. He had his home planet to worry about. Alloran's last words to Ax, way back when we'd left him in that clearing half-dead from rattlesnake venom, rang in my head.

_They are on the home world... fight..._

None of us had ever mentioned those words. I guess everyone had been as scared as me about what it could mean. But we were preoccupied with our planet, our fight.

Ax was an andalite, and the fight on his homeworld was his fight. He was an andalite _aristh_ , and the yeerks were his fight wherever they were. I suppose he had good reason to be worried.

“Are these Leerans powerful?” Rachel asked.

“Not powerful. But impossible to infiltrate. In-fil-tray-tuh. Leerans are telepathic,” Ax explained.

“So are andalites,” Marco pointed out.

“Not like Leerans. They can read minds, see the thoughts and secrets of any who come near. The yeerks would not be able to infiltrate. They would have no choice but to attempt an open invasion.”

<I don't suppose,> Tobias said slowly, <that there is any chance that Visser One would have brought any Leeran-Controllers with her?>

For about twenty seconds, everybody was silent.

“We can't let them read our minds,” I said, stating the obvious. “If the yeerks learn who we are...”

<A mission out in the ocean, without enough information to properly plan, over a base of unknown importance... and now putting our identities on the line?> Tobias said. <This is too dangerous. I don't think it's worth it.>

“Erek wouldn't have come to us if it wasn't important,” Rachel said. “The last time the chee came to us for help, it was to stop the yeerks using an incredibly powerful alien computer. I say we check it out.”

We waited for Marco to point out the danger. He didn't. I glanced at Jake. He was silent.

I guess I was playing the state-the-obvious role for the afternoon, then.

“Rachel,” I said quietly, “we have our families to think about.”

She glared at me. Too late, I realised that that might have sounded like a jibe about her father. That wasn't my intention. My intention was to remind her that four of us had parents, and she had two sisters, who would be all but guaranteed to be taken if we were captured by the yeerks, in case we'd done anything suspicious around them. That Tom, after living for months with an 'andalite bandit' and not noticing, would certainly be killed by Visser Three. The Star Defenders, the free hork-bajir, the chee... if we died in battle, then we died in battle. But to have the yeerks learn our secrets, either through capture or through these Leerans... that was a whole new level of danger.

“I think we're missing the bigger picture here,” Marco said.

<There's a bigger picture than mind-reading Controllers?> Tobias asked.

“Yes. A whole planet of mind-reading Controllers. Erek doesn't think that this is just some inspection. He says that this project is most likely to do with the Leeran invasion, and it's influential enough to bring Visser One here to oversee it personally. So even if we avoid the Leerans today, that doesn't mean that we can in the future.”

<There's no guarantee we'll encounter them in the future,> Tobias pointed out. <We don't know how well this invasion of Leera is going, how many Leeran-Controllers they have, or whether they'd sent such Controllers to Earth.>

“We don't know that we'll encounter them on this base, either,” Rachel said with a shrug. “But if we do – if Visser One has brought some to Earth – what's the bet she'll do so again in the future? If they become a fixture on Earth, we're doomed. And not just us. They'll find the chee spies in the Sharing, too.”

“Just because they can read biological minds doesn't mean they can read robot minds,” I shrugged. It occurred to me that they might not be able to read human minds either. We were an alien species they'd never encountered, after all. But the stakes were too high to gamble on that.

“And people walking around The Sharing with unreadable minds wouldn't be suspicious at all,” Rachel countered, rolling her eyes.

“Lets take a vote,” Jake said. “Who thinks we should pursue this?”

“Let's do it,” Rachel said instantly.

“This could be too important to ignore,” Marco agreed.

“I will follow Prince Jake,” Ax said. “But it is worth noting that this may give us the opportunity to strike a blow in the larger war, not just for Earth.”

<This is way too dangerous,> Tobias said. <The physical danger I'm okay with, but mind-readers? I'm against it.>

“Cassie?” Jake asked.

I hesitated. I didn't think we had nearly enough information to make a decision. Tobias was right – mind-readers made this way too dangerous. But Marco was right too – either the Leerans would be coming to Earth or they wouldn't, and if the fate of this base affected that war, then this might be our only chance to make their presence less likely.

“I don't know,” I said. “I'll go with whatever the rest of you decide.”

That meant that Jake, assuming Ax would support his decision, was the ultimate decider. He looked at his own hands. Bit his lip.

“We've bitten off more than we could chew before,” he said finally. “The first time we went to the yeerk pool, we very nearly died. When we attacked that supply ship, we nearly died again. And that whole Bug fighter Sario Rip thing...” he shook his head. “Some of our missions have been dangerous, but necessary, like rescuing Ax or the thing with the Pemalite Crystal. But a lot of them have been kind of stupid. So I think we should do this, we should check out this base... but we go in prepared. We think through this properly, we make plans, including contingency plans. We can't charge blind into this. It's way too important.”

“That's it then,” Rachel said. “Looks like we're going underwater. Again.”

<Somebody nearly drowns on every underwater mission,> Tobias groaned. <Has anyone else noticed that?>


	3. Chapter 3

We'd decided to fly in. Our birds of prey morphs couldn't fly over water for that long, but seagulls could. Of course, once we arrived at the base, we would all need to swim, which meant that Tobias needed both a seagull morph and some sort of water morph. In the end, we got him a dolphin so that he could blend in with the rest of us as a pod. Getting a dolphin for Ax was somewhat trickier, as it's not particularly easy to bring an andalite over to a dolphin tank without anybody noticing. But we managed to do so once The Gardens had closed.

Jake had Ax tell me everything he knew about the Leerans. Fortunately, Seerow's Kindness didn't seem to cover random biological and anthropological information about aliens. Unfortunately, what Ax knew about the Leerans amounted to very little.

<I have never seen a Leeran in person,> he admitted apologetically. <They are banned on the home world, for obvious reasons. We were taught about them in school, but I was not paying very much attention.>

What he did know was that their telepathy was range-dependent, with a radius of about thirty feet, and largely indiscriminate. They were amphibious, but moved much better in water than on land, and somewhat resembled large frogs. Ax said that they would be unmistakeable if we saw them – no Earth life he knew of looked quite like them.

So, if Leerans were present, we had to stay away from them to be safe. Fair enough.

Leerans were the first problem.

The second was actually finding the island. It didn't look like that big a problem to me, but Marco was adamant that it was, and announced so at great length the next day.

“The ocean,” he explained, pacing across the floor of Rachel's room and waving his hands vaguely as if to try to convey its vastness, “is big. Really big. You just wouldn't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you think it's a big trip up into the mountains to the hork-bajir valley? That's just a grain of sand in the ocean. It's so big – ”

“We've never had any problems before,” I pointed out.

“Before, we hitched rides on boats. We knew where we were going. Taking a boat out to this Royan Island is a no-go; even if we found one, it's going to be all Controllers, and they're going to be on the lookout. We're navigating ourselves.”

“Okay,” Jake said, “so how did you do it when you went sailing?”

“We didn't go out this far. But what we're going to need is a compass. And some way of measuring distance.”

“As birds? Impossible.”

“Not necessarily,” I said slowly. “Lots of birds are migratory. They have a natural sense of direction, a compass in their brains. It's called magnetoception.”

“Well, can seagulls do it?” Jake asked.

“I don't know,” I admitted. “It's not something I'd want to find out on a mission. Geese can.”

“Geese then. Can you get us geese?”

“That shouldn't be too hard. They hang out in parks sometimes, although animal control doesn't like it.” I chewed my lip. I wasn't happy about how many morphs we were picking up, not knowing if there was a limit. But geese, at least, would be very useful. Especially if the yeerks did branch out more often. “How's Friday after school for everyone?”

“Friday night for geese, Saturday for last preparations, Sunday we head out,” Jake said. “Does that work for everyone?”

It did, but it brought us right into problem number three – we had no idea how long the mission would take. To get out to the base, figure out what to do about it, and get home again could take all day. It could, in theory, take several days, with us heading out each morning and travelling home each night. Months ago, we could've gotten away with all-day missions so long as we went on weekends and didn't stay out too far past dark, but we'd spent so much time on unexpectedly extended missions that all of our parents were getting more strict on the disappearing thing. I was permanently one step away from grounded, Rachel was constantly having to look after her younger sisters, Marco's dad spent all his non-work time at home and would notice long disappearances, and Jake lived with Tom. We spent nearly an hour trying to chart a non-suspicious travel plan before Rachel sat bolt upright on her bed and snapped her fingers.

“Wait a second,” she said, “chee have holograms.”

And that was why I spent Saturday showing Maria, a millennia-old alien android wearing a hologram resembling an unassuming elderly woman, how to correctly bandage a swan's wing without getting bitten.

“I'm surprised that none of you have been vets or anything before,” I pointed out as I tied off the bandage and put the swan back in his cage. He hissed at me.

“We prefer to avoid medical professions,” Maria shrugged. “It often conflicts with our programming. Besides, the veterinary sciences change very quickly. I daresay there are plenty of modern vets who do not know how to care for many of the animals that you care for here.”

“Perhaps,” I conceded. “I'm a little confused as to exactly what your programming does and doesn't let you do. Can you, say, set a broken bone?”

“Not if it requires us to rebreak the bone.”

“Can you give injections?”

“Are there any animals here that will require injections from you?”

“Not at the moment. My dad does most of those. But we might get new patients in.”

“Then I will improvise.” Maria smiled. “We have a lot of experience at not being suspicious.”

I nodded. She hadn't actually answered my question, I noticed. But I didn't push the issue. I was probably being rude and intrusive.

“Thanks for doing this,” I said for about the millionth time.

“The chee owe you a great debt,” she shrugged. “Besides, this is what we do. Stepping into an already existing life will be... an interesting challenge.”

I could hear something outside. The sound I was always listening for when we had meetings in the barn – the heavy footsteps of my father. I glanced back at Maria, but she was already gone. The door hadn't opened, so she was probably hiding behind a hologram somewhere.

Dad was carrying a small animal trap under his arm (the kind we use to catch animals that need help, not those horrible foot-mutilating things that hunters use). It was empty. I rushed forward to help him with it.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi, Cassie.” He seemed distracted.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, it's... no problem. How's the swan?”

“Not bad, for a swan with an injured wing. I just changed the bandage.”

“Right. Good.” He headed for his little desk of files and books while I put the trap away. My dad had to keep careful track of our budget and supplies, but apart from taking inventory every now and then, I didn't have much to do with that stuff.

Maria's quiet voice right next to my shoulder made me jump. “You can go,” she said. “I will sneak out in a little while.”

I nodded, and gave my father a quick hug on the way out. I was heading out over the ocean in the morning, and I might not be back until that night. Or next week.

Or never.


	4. Chapter 4

In the Sahara there lives a tribe called the Tubu. Their natural resources are such that they cannot make or grow many of the things they need, such as soap and clothing, so every year, women from the tribe saddle up their camel and trek out across the Sahara to trade. It's a long walk along a wasteland of ever-shifting sand dunes with frequent sandstorms, no available food or water and very few landmarks. The women can't carry enough water for the whole journey, so they move between little wells, wells so difficult to see in the ever-moving landscape that if you miss one by even a few hundred feet, you wouldn't see it, and the entire caravan would die of thirst. For hundreds of years, these traders have been passing down the secrets of navigating this desert from mother to daughter; how to count the larger, immovable dunes; where to expect a tree and just how far to turn when you see it; how to keep a perfect sense of direction and pace one's steps so that one will walk right up to the tiny little well hidden in the sand.

Trying to find Royan Island from the air felt a little bit like that.

<Okay,> Rachel said, <are we sure we're even going in the right direction?> She was flying just ahead of me and to the right, creating a slipstream that coasted over my wings and eased my own journey. Ahead of her, forming the point of our V formation, was Tobias. The others were on our right, creating the other half of the V.

<According to this goose brain, yes,> I said for the tenth time. <Assuming Marco's map is correct.>

<Right, but how well can a goose brain navigate? If we're off by a little bit, how far out does that put us on such a journey?>

<Ax,> Tobias asked, <how long have we been flying? Just in flight, not counting morphing stops.>

Ax considered that a moment. <Our total flight time is approximately four hundred of your minutes.>

That long? Goose morph was great. I didn't even feel tired. If we didn't have to stop to demorph, we could have just kept going forever. Geese are the wolves of the skies.

<Right. Well, I've clocked geese before. We should be travelling at about forty miles per hour. So we shouldn't be anywhere near the island yet. We need to fly for another thirty, maybe forty minutes, before we can realistically expect to see anything.>

<Forty of our minutes, you mean?> Marco asked.

<Focus, Marco,> Jake said.

<On what? The waves? The other waves? I'm just saying, why couldn't the yeerks have used that resort island we passed awhile back? That looked like a cool place.>

<You're only saying that because you saw women sunbathing in bikinis on that island,> Rachel said.

<I'm saying it because it was close. The sunbathing bikini models were merely a bonus.>

<I don't think they were models,> Jake said.

<How would you know, Jake? Do you know every bikini model? And if so, can you give me their phone numbers?>

<If the yeerks had used that other island,> Tobias cut in, <then those maybe-bikini-models would all be agents of the enemy. Are you sure you want that, Marco?>

<Guys,> I said, <I think I see something.>

<The island shouldn't be in view yet,> Tobias reminded me.

<No, under the water. Does it look kinda... purple to you?>

I dipped down for a closer look and was instantly buffeted by the still air outside Rachel's slipstream. The waves looked normal, but there was a strange mass underneath them. Small, perhaps the size of a house, but standing out brightly. Not purple, I realised as I got closer; that was just the blue ocean above distorting the colour. Ultraviolet. To human eyes, it would be invisible.

<What is it?> Jake asked as we moved closer.

<It is most likely a hologram, calibrated to fool human eyes,> Ax surmised. <This would suggest that the base extends some distance from the island. I do not know why they would build so close to the ocean surface, though.>

<We need to get a better look,> Jake said. <Let's go dolphin, everyone.>

<They may have security cameras in the surrounding water,> Ax warned.

<Good point,> Jake said. <We get some distance, and then morph dolphin.>

We turned back the way we'd come and flapped until the little patch of ultraviolet was almost on the horizon. Then we dipped below the waves and, a couple at a time and in order of our swimming ability, demorphed and morphed dolphin.

Then we turned and crossed the same territory again, underwater.

I didn't expect to be able to see the hologram as a dolphin. I'd been a dolphin before and knew that they couldn't see UV any better than humans could; in fact, they couldn't even see most shades of blue, so the ocean around us was essentially colorless. They were also very nearly colorblind.

But while dolphins may be lacking in sight, they do have another sensory advantage.

I kicked my powerful tail, pushing myself forward through the water, and fired a series of echolocating clicks. They didn't tell me much that I couldn't see in the bright water near the surface – the other Animorphs swimming around me, a few fish rushing to get out of our way – but if we were still out when the sky darkened, or if we had to dive, it would be useful. And I was hoping it might be able to penetrate the hologram, or if there was a forcefield, detect its presence.

It was hard to think too seriously about the mission as a dolphin. A dolphin in the ocean is a generally happy animal. They're curious and playful by nature. But we'd been dolphins before, and we knew how to keep ourselves on mission.

 _The hologram_ , I told myself. _We're looking for a new thing, a hologram! I have to find it first!_ I dashed forward, back towards the patch of now-invisible ultraviolet.

Of course, I'd forgotten that not all of us had morphed dolphins before.

<Hey,> Tobias exclaimed. <This is great!>

<Indeed,> Ax agreed. He flashed something at us that wasn't words, just a brief concept of joy.

<I bet I can swim faster than you, Ax-man,> Tobias said.

Ax broadcast wordless disagreement at his words and shot forward.

<Guys,> Marco said, <get a grip. We have a mission here.> He sounded tense. Businesslike. Not like Marco at all.

<Aw, let 'em have their fun,> Rachel said.

<Can they have their fun in the direction of the base, at least?> Marco asked. The pair had changed direction in their race, and now veered off at a right angle to the rest of the pod. While Rachel and Jake dashed after them, I spoke privately to Marco.

<Are you okay?> I asked him.

<Okay? Of course. Why wouldn't I be?>

<I don't know. You've been kinda tense. I can't help thinking that you don't like water, and maybe...>

<Who said I don't like water? Being a dolphin is great.>

<And yet you don't seem to be liking it all that much. I mean, I know your mom died in water. And our first dolphin mission, you _did_ get bitten nearly in half. >

<Good point, Cassie. Hey, why don't we talk about that stuff at length while in the water on a dangerous mission? I'm sure this is the perfect time to deal with that sort of thing. It won't affect my focus or ability to do this mission at all.>

<Oookay. Backing off.> It was becoming more and more apparent that my attempts to keep my friends together emotionally could very easily slip into intrusive territory. I'd been trying to keep an eye on that since the Sario Rip thing with Jake, and I hadn't thought I'd crossed any lines with Marco. But then, that was for him to determine, not me. <Just wanted to say, I'm here if you need to talk, right?>

<I know.> His mental voice softened. <I'm fine, Cassie.>

<None of us are fine, Marco.>

He laughed mentally. <True enough.> He echolocated. <There, to the left. See it?>

I looked. There was nothing there; just water. I echolocated. About two hundred feet away was a huge spire, only about the width of a city block but stretching as far up and down as we could see.

<Hey guys,> Tobias said in an incredibly chipper tone, coming up behind us with the rest of the Animorphs. <Found anything cool?>

<Yup,> Marco said. <Right over there.>

They echolocated, as we had done.

<Let's get some air,> Jake said, <and see how far down we can follow this thing. Presumably it connects to the main base. Any idea why they need this tower, Ax?>

<I do not know,> he admitted, his voice still more concept than words. <It may be part of a ventilation system. Or they may need access to sunlight for some reason. It may even be a launching point for boats. In any case, I do not know why they would not simply use the island that this base is supposedly based from.>

We swam up to get a new breath as Jake had suggested, and then dove.

Down, down, down. Knowing the hologram didn't have a force field like the chee's (or it would have blocked our echolocation), we swam through it and followed the tower down. Most of it was blank wall, some kind of metal; there were occasional windows for no obvious reason. Behind them, people worked. Humans, hork-bajir, taxxons, and some kind of lopsided apelike thing that Ax identified as gedd, a species from the yeerk home planet and their first conquest. ( _Everything that the yeerks can do to us_ , I couldn't help thinking, _everything that they've evolved to do to another being's brain, is wrapped up in gedd biology. If only I could get some biological data on them..._ )

Then, through one of the windows we passed, we saw two very important things.

The first was a woman. She didn't look like much. She was short and middle aged, with coffee-colored skin and her hair trimmed in a neat bob. She wore an expensive-looking suit, with a dark tie and a neat pencil skirt and sensible shoes; nothing flashy. But everything in her bearing said that she was a force to be reckoned with. She stood behind a row of computers, where men and women in jumpsuits pecked away at switches and keys. Except when she addressed them, they seemed to be avoiding eye contact with her. We'd seen her once before, aboard the Pool Ship.

Visser One.

A chill went down my spine. The dolphin in me wasn't feeling so playful any more.

Somehow, her lack of morphing power and telekinetic influence made her even more terrifying than Visser Three. It meant that she'd been able to achieve a higher rank without relying on such things. And while she didn't have a range of dangerous morphs, she most definitely had a lot of dangerous Controllers at her command. Her ruthlessness and political games had saved our lives once. They could just as easily end them.

The other important thing was the being standing a few feet behind her staring out into the ocean. It looked a little like a giant frog, with strong webbed back feet and two huge eyes. It did not, however, have any front legs or arms; just four long tentacles evenly spaced around its its body, about where its neck should be, but it had no neck. Its skin looked slimy, like it was covered in vaseline. It watched us as we swam downward with some interest.

<Ax?> Jake asked.

<That is a Leeran,> Ax confirmed. <We should be outside its telepathic range.>

<Let's move a little farther away just in case,> Jake said.

We moved away from the tower, through something tingly, and it vanished behind us; we'd left the hologram. We kept diving.

<Is anybody else feeling like maybe they might want to breathe soon?> Tobias asked eventually.

<Yeah. Let's not gamble our lives on finding a source of air down here,> Jake agreed. <Let's have a look inside the hologram for anything pertinent and get back up. Try an approach from the island.>

Ax dove into the hologram first.

<Prince Jake,> he said, <there are several large fish in here.>

Fish? Who cared about fish? I didn't, except as food. But Marco was cautious. He fired an echolocating burst through the hologram.

I saw him stiffen beside me.

<Hammerheads!> he shouted. <A whole lot of hammerheads!>

I echolocated, and my heart nearly stopped. He was right; there were hammerheads, ten of them, all lines up neatly in front of us.

<Don't panic,> I warned, trying not to let my voice give away that I was ignoring my own advice. <Don't panic and don't flee. Hammerheads don't usually eat dolphins. They wouldn't attack dolphins unless they were really hungry, or outnumber them.>

<I count ten,> Marco said tersely. <Does that outnumber us enough for you?>

Good point.

As one, we turned to flee. And I was pretty sure that, for a second, my heart _did_ stop.

<Oh god,> I said, <there are more behind us.>

There were more behind us.

There were four more behind us.

Fourteen sharks. Six dolphins.

The odds were not in our favour.

Couldn't go forward. Couldn't go backward. The way the sharks were lined up meant they'd easily cut us off if we went to either side. Downward was a bad choice; they breathed water and we didn't. Only choice was to move upward.

Two sharks were already moving in position above us, cutting us off.

That was too smart for hammerheads. Hammerheads didn't hunt in packs. Hammerheads didn't anticipate the needs of their prey and use it against them.

<They're Controllers,> I whispered, in sudden realisation. <Like the horses near Zone 91. They're security for the base.>

<Well that's great,> Marco said angrily. <That's just great. Because walking salad shooters from hell weren't bad enough, no, now we have to deal with sharks.>

<We all aim for one,> Tobias suggested, <draw a lot of blood, and escape while they're in a feeding frenzy.>

<The old taxxon strategy, huh?> Rachel said. <I like it.> The edge to her voice didn't even sound like panic. It sounded like enthusiasm.

<Above us to the left,> Jake said. <Go!>

We all motored upward, a spear of dolphin flesh, just as the sharks surrounding us started to close in. We shot up toward the target dolphin and slammed into it, ramming out noses into its gills, into its face, one after another. I scraped my nose on its rough, dentured skin, but I wasn't bleeding nearly as much as the shark was; I kept swimming upward, towards air, the other Animorphs keeping step.

Thirteen sharks followed us.

<Apparently they're not interested in blood,> Marco reported, unnecessarily.

<This isn't right,> I said, <they should be attacking the injured one!>

<Yeah, well they should also be hunting alone and not guarding an alien base in packs. I guess yeerks are more interested in Animorph meat than that of their teammates, huh.>

 _Stupid, stupid_ , I chided myself. Of course yeerks could control the bloodlust. A shark must be cake compared to a taxxon.

To one side, a tower of unbreachable metal; not useful to us. To the other, deep open waters. Above, we could just see the faint glow of sunlight. Below, sharks. So many sharks, all giving chase. But they weren't just staying below us. Some had peeled off to make a ring. They knew that once we hit the surface, we had nowhere to go. The air itself would be a barrier as firm as any wall.

We'd hit the surface of the water. We'd get a breath, perhaps. And then we'd fall prey to the teeth of thirteen hammerhead sharks.

<Jump over them!> Marco exclaimed in sudden inspiration. <When we hit the surface, we jump over them and flee. Sharks don't jump! They do not jump!>

He powered forward, twisted, broke the surface of the water and leapt through the air, sailing towards and over a shark attempting to cut off his escape.

The shark launched itself from the water and slammed its face directly into Marco's. He flopped right back down into the water, stunned... or worse.

Sharks began to close in.

<Attack!> Jake screamed.

We all dashed for Marco, launching ourselves at the approaching sharks.

Then...

Scree-EEEE-eeee-EEEE-eeee-EEEE-eeee!

It was a siren, just loud enough to be heard with acute dolphin hearing. If I'd been human I doubt I'd have heard it at all. But instantly, without hesitation, the sharks turned around and swam away.

<What was that about?> I wondered.

<Flee now,> Tobias suggested, <muse about cause and effect later. I'm thinking we get wings and get out of this death pit.>

He had a point.

Jake was nudging a nonresponsive Marco with his dolphin nose. <Marco. Marco, buddy. You ok, man?>

<Yeah, I... yeah.> Marco righted himself.

<Good. Demorph. Get wings. We need to figure out our next step somewhere sharks won't get us.>

<So it looks like sharks can jump, Marco,> Rachel couldn't resist putting in.

<Why did you think they couldn't?> I asked.

<Dunno. Saw it in a movie.> Marco was mumbling, but at least he was coherent. As I watched, his tail split into legs, and his face squished up into a human one. Whatever the sharks had done to him, demorphing should shake it off.

Presumably.

I didn't actually know whether morphing would help with something like brain damage. I mean, it seemed to heal most things, but whatever was doing our thinking for us when we were in morph clearly wasn't our animal brains, and if we could still be stunned or disoriented, if the consequences of damage somehow existed in whatever part of us was outside the morph...

I needn't have worried, though, because by the time Marco was in goose morph, he was fine. The rest of us got into the air, and we made for Royan Island. Knowing where the base was, the island wasn't hard to find.

But it was still some distance away. The base must have been quite extensive.

The island itself was small, the kind of place you'd expect one of those private resorts you see in movies a lot. It had a nice, fairly pristine little beach, and some trees. There was a single house on one side, quite a large one. We did a quick flyover but it didn't look like anyone was living there at the moment. Probably a holiday home.

After poking about a bit to find the island deserted and not finding any surveillance equipment, we found an isolated spot under some trees to demorph.

“Okay,” Rachel said, leaning back against a tree and looking like she was on a photoshoot, “now what?”

I shrugged and ran a finger under the top of one of my long-sleeved gloves. I was used to having spare paper in there, and the lack of it was bothering me. I still had a couple of dollars, but the notepaper had of course become soaked the moment I demorphed in the water for the first time and I'd had to get rid of it. When we weren't in the middle of a mission, it would be interesting to see if I could reabsorb the paper and not the water that soaked it, and thus recreate dry paper. I should make a note of it. Y'know, if I'd had anything to make a note on.

“If we want to get anything done here,” Marco said, “we need to find a way past the shark-Controller guards.”

“That alarm called them off,” I said. “If we could imitate that...”

“It might be on some kind of schedule,” Jake said. “If it's not meant to go off again for hours and it suddenly does, the yeerks won't be fooled. We could wait for it, but without knowing what it was...”

<I find it curious that they called off the attack to obey it,> Ax pointed out. <If they were Controllers and they attacked us, then they clearly suspected what we were. They gave up their chance to possibly eliminate the 'andalite bandits' in order to obey the alarm. It must have been a serious emergency.>

“Maybe they're supposed to attack anything they see, and just thought we were dolphins,” Rachel shrugged.

“Or maybe the alarm is in Visser Three's control and they'd be beheaded for being a moment late before they could explain,” Marco added. “With a leader like that, even the possibility of killing us off might not be worth the risk. Either way, unless we can predict whatever that alarm was, we need another way past them.”

<Maybe we can morph, I don't know, something with camoflage?> Tobias suggested.

“Sharks can sense living animals from the electricity they give off,” I pointed out wearily. “They don't need to see us.”

<Oh.>

“There is one way,” Jake said slowly. “We don't have to be invisible. We just have to be unnoticeable.”

“What do you mean?” Rachel asked.

“Well, what if we morph hammerheads? We can blend right in.”

“Okay,” Marco said. “How?”

“Are there any hammerheads at The Gardens, Cassie?”

I shook my head. “I'm afraid not. The Gardens doesn't really do sharks.”

“And going after the shark-Controllers is suicide,” Marco said.

<Maybe not,> Tobias said.

“I'm sorry, Tobias, were you just in a different battle to me? Because in the one I was in, we were toast.”

<As six dolphins surprised by fourteen sharks working together, yes, we were. But we're not planning a full-on battle here. We're planning to hunt and acquire one shark. It's a totally different situation.>

“Alright,” Jake said. “What's the plan? How do we hunt a shark?”

Tobias fluttered to a low branch in his tree where he could meet our eyes.

<First,> he said, <you're going to need teeth.>


	5. Chapter 5

It was only a couple of hours before sunset when four eels and a shark swam, just a little under the surface, for the tall tower we'd seen protruding from the underwater base. Tobias drifted above us, a seagull resting on a cushion of air above the waves. Ax's shark morph was making me sort of nervous, but I couldn't have been half as nervous as he was. He was the most visible of all of us. Ax didn't have an eel morph. But that was okay, because we needed somebody with bulk, and a shark morph was at least better than a dolphin.

<I don't like this plan,> I pointed out for about the millionth time. <They might be Controllers, but these sharks are also innocent wildlife.>

<So is pretty much every Controller we fight,> Rachel pointed out, sounding annoyed. <If you have a way to fight this war without endangering innocents I'd like to hear it.>

<I'm just saying that I don't think missions with a body count should always be plan A.>

<We need to get into this base, Cassie,> Jake pointed out gently. <There are human lives at stake here. And other sentient lives. We can't be distracted by a handful of sharks.>

Sentient lives. Human lives. Those terms again.

I remembered killing the termite queen, I remembered the genuine fear and confusion of my sisters as I destroyed their entire world. I remembered the ellimists, or at least the ellimist we'd met. I doubted we'd fit his people's equivalent definition to 'sentience'.

But a mission wasn't the time for that debate.

Don't get me wrong. We were fighting a war. I knew we had to do what we had to do. But I also knew that it was all too easy to come up with little lies, little rules to make what we had to do easier for us. Things like assuming that somebody with a yeerk in their head was inherently worth less than somebody who was uninfested – unless they were family or friend, of course. And I knew that when those rules existed, we would use them. If killing a Controller through convenience wasn't murder, then we were going to kill more Controllers... more people. And more sharks and termites, although nobody else seemed to get why I cared about that. If it was easy to kill, easy to do awful things, we'd start trading in lives to do what was easy instead of what was right. The others might find my 'moralising' annoying. They might think I was being silly. They might see hypocrisy in my insistence that the life of a mere shark was valuable when I tore the throats from hork-bajir on a semi-regular basis. But that's only because they tried not to think about what we did. And _somebody_ had to think about it.

I often wished that somebody wasn't me, too. But we were all doing things that we didn't want to.

<I see a group of four hammerheads approaching,> Ax reported as we headed for the underwater tower.

<We can't expect better odds than that,> Marco said. <We should take it.>

<In today's mission, the role of Rachel will be played by Marco,> I mumbled, mostly to myself.

<Yeah, you're totally stealing my thunder, Marco,> Rachel added.

<Tobias, are you ready?> Jake asked.

<I think so. Staying airborne is hard but I'm managing.>

<The hammerheads have noticed me and are approaching,> Ax reported.

<Okay, Ax, turn and flee,> Jake said. <Everyone else...>

<Let's do it!> Rachel cut in.

<Yeah. That.>

I could see the nearest shark, a huge bulk approaching rapidly. We four eels dashed right for it. The shark would sense us approaching, but we were faster than a hammerhead's bite. Hopefully. The shark probably wouldn't bother with us anyway. Generally, there were only two outcomes to expect from that kind of interaction; either the eel gets away, or the shark gets dinner.

We closed in, two to each side, burrowed our way into the shark's gills, and started biting.

The reaction was immediate. The shark thrashed and struggled, but we were small and inconveniently located and had strong little jaws. Other sharks around us milled in confusion, buying us time. Most sharks wouldn't know what to do in this situation, but we were banking on yeerk intelligence, and we were not disappointed; the water was full of vicious little eels, so the shark shot for the surface.

We detached and, in pairs, went for other sharks. Ax got under the wounded shark as it broke the surface and forced it up. They were quickly obscured by a cloud of blood.

<How are you holding up, Ax?> Jake asked.

<There is a lot of blood in the water, Prince Jake.> He sounded strange.

<Try to keep control. Tobias?>

<Got him.> We couldn't see anything, but those words told us exactly where Tobias was; after demorphing while airborne, he'd perched on the hammerhead's body above the water, and was acquiring him.

My job was to bite, to keep the other sharks off Ax. I bit. The shark thrashed, drawing its gills away from me; I bit at an eye instead. Anything soft, vulnerable; anything to distract it, to keep it down, to keep it off my allies. My friends. Ax would protect Tobias while he morphed, but Ax couldn't take four sharks. Even if three of them were injured.

Rachel, noticing what I was doing, made a bid for the other eye.

The sharks had apparently decided that this fight didn't have good odds for them. Three of them turned to flee. Our shark, our bleeding, newly blinded shark, struggled, but Ax and Tobias held it in place while we demorphed and acquired it.

Sharks are amazing healers. And they have a lot of excellent senses. Maybe a blind shark could heal up its gills and do okay. Maybe.

I doubted it. A shark in that condition was as good as dead. And that mightn't be such a bad thing; if the yeerk in its head told anybody we'd acquired it... still, I silently wished it luck as I touched its razor skin as gently as I could and absorbed its DNA.

Then I closed my eyes and focused.

 _Hammerhead_.

My skull twisted, elongated; I felt my eyes slide apart and stretch out of the sides of my face. My legs merged into a tail, my arms flattened into fins. My skin roughened, and thousands of tiny bumps like short feathers or very thick hairs sprouted along it.

They were not hairs. They were modified teeth. A shark is covered in millions and millions of tiny, sharp teeth. Around me, the others were undergoing similar transformations, Ax lagging behind everyone else since he'd lingered to hold the shark down the longest.

My lungs closed off and for a long, terrifying moment, I couldn't breathe; then gill tissue expanded under my jaw and gill slits opened up in my sides. I swam forward, pumping water over them. Finally, last of all, two characteristics arose at once. The first was the shark's excellent sense of smell, drowned out by the sweet, coppery blood spreading from our DNA source and out into the water.

The second was the shark's mind, and all that mind was interested in was the sweet, coppery blood spreading from our DNA source and out into the water.

 _Prey._ Hunger. _Prey._

Wounded prey. Time to eat. Other sharks... problems. Fight. Kill. There's blood. Wounded prey. Kill. Eat.

I bit.

Something struggled against my teeth and succeeded only in slicing a piece of flesh out of its own body. I swallowed. It bit back but I was already biting again, grabbing more food. The shark brain was interested in little else. There was blood so it was time for fighting; there was food so it was time for eating. Other teeth tore at the prey. Other teeth tore at me. I tore at their owners. More blood, more prey; more food.

The food source before me began to vanish and I became dimly aware that there were way, way too many sharks in my immediate vicinity. Like me, they'd been eating. But there was almost nothing left of our prey now, and we were all bleeding. Who was the most injured? Who was the prey?

What if it was me? I should leave. They might chase. Or I might miss out on the meal. There was blood.

There was blood and I was hungry.

<Guys,> a voice said somewhere in my mind.

One of the sharks was missing a big chunk from one side, including a fin. I could attack the tail. Then it would be weak and everyone would attack it. I could eat.

<We can't waste our time with this stuff,> a different voice said. <We have a mission.>

<Guys,> the first voice said again.

I circled. The others circled. We were sizing each other up.

<Marco, I don't think they're listening.>

<Well how did you pull out of it?>

<I'm a predator. A predator is a predator.>

<Well we have to snap them out of it somehow,> Marco said, neglecting to make a joke.

Joke?

The blood in the water was getting a lot thinner. The sharks around me were strong and alert. Threats. I should leave. We should all leave each other. There was no prey here.

<Guys. Yeerks. Remember?>

Yeerks? Yeerks weren't prey. They were inaccessible, hidden in the brains of others; others like sharks now, apparently, as if it wasn't difficult enough handling them in humans like...

Humans...

<Guys,> I said. <Guys, we need to focus. We're friends, remember? Social creatures. Humans, andalites. We don't think this way.>

<Welcome to the party, Cassie,> Tobias said sardonically. <You're good at the snap-people-out-of-it thing. How do I stop whoever this is from biting me in half?>

<I don't know, I make it up as I go along,> I said.

<That seems to describe most of our missions,> Jake said. <Who's with us?>

<Everyone except Rachel and Ax, I think.>

<I am here, Prince Jake.>

<Rachel, then,> Marco said. <Hoo, boy.>

I spoke to her privately. <Rachel. Rachel, this isn't the time to eat. You have to protect your sisters. Jordan and Sara. Remember? There's a mission.>

<What? I... whoah. I do not like this morph. Or I do like this morph. I can't tell.> She dashed forward experimentally. <I mean, if we get into a fight, no problem.>

<Except for losing ourselves in the morph and accidentally killing each other,> Jake said.

<Well... yeah,> Rachel considered. <Maybe we should try to avoid fights.>

<I hope somebody got that in writing,> Marco said. <Rachel advising we avoid fights.>

<This blood is really distracting,> I said. <Maybe we should heal up.>

<We can't head into the base covered in blood anyway,> Jake agreed. <Let's try to be more... more prepared for the instincts this time.

We demorphed. We remorphed. I was getting kind of worn out from all the morphing, but I still found the energy to swim quickly away from the morphing site, the place the yeerks had last seen us. The place that reeked of blood.

The place where the few remaining scraps of the hammerhead that had donated its DNA still floated.


	6. Chapter 6

Getting into the base seemed like it should be a simple enough plan.

We find some other hammerheads within less than two hours. We follow them without looking suspicious and hope they lead us to the entrance. We manage to get inside and demorph, still within our two hours, morph insects, and scout out the base to find out what it was for and what we needed to do. Simple.

This was one of our well-thought-out plans.

Being able to breathe water at least let us follow the tower farther downward. Ax kept time as always; we needed to be able to get to the surface and demorph before becoming trapped. It wasn't hard to keep mindful of the time; Tobias asked for an update every five minutes or so.

We were almost at the seafloor (or at least what looked like the seafloor) when we heard it.

Scree-EEEE-eeee-EEEE-eeee-EEEE-eeee!

The alarm. It rang from somewhere below.

And suddenly, there were hammerheads.

Hammerheads coming in from every direction, all moving to a common point. We followed them. There were dozens of them. Close to a hundred.

<If they suspect anything,> Tobias said, <we are so dead.>

The hammerheads were swimming to a small hatch that was opening in the tower. They lined up neatly to enter the hatch. We lined up with them.

<Well, we're getting inside,> Rachel said.

<Yeah,> Marco added. <I'd prefer a method that didn't feel like cattle lining up to a slaughterhouse, but whatever.>

The line moved forward quickly. Sharks, I knew, had to swim forward in order to breathe, which seemed like somewhat of a design flaw to me, but their species had survived several times longer than mine so my opinion on the issue probably didn't matter all that much.

I was the first Animorph in line, so I didn't know what to expect upon entering the hatch. What I didn't expect was a pair of big metal loops descending from the ceiling and grabbing my head, one on either side of the 'hammer' that held my eyes wide apart.

<Oscar Mayer Shark-Meat Lunchables,> Marco said, somewhere behind me. <Hammerhead slices, American cheese, crackers, and a cookie.>

<Marco?> I said. <Shut up.>

<Why? What's going on? Are we about to die?>

<I... have no idea.> The loops dragged me forward. I struggled, and in the process, managed to look up for a second.

Hammerhead sharks, despite having amazing depth perception, can't see into air very well. But I could see well enough. I could see that above me was air, for one thing. And in that air was a giant needle. A giant needle that I was being dragged under.

The needle started to descend.

<Cassie!> Jake exclaimed behind me. <Cassie, demorph before that thing gets you!>

<In this giant line of hammerhead Controllers?!> I snapped, far too scared to be nice. I couldn't demorph. I might die, but I _couldn't_ demorph.

Of course, a moment's thought would suggest that needle-to-the-head was a really dumb way to kill a shark. But I wasn't really thinking straight.

The needle pierced my skull. It was a _big_ needle. Fortunately, sharks have amazing pain tolerance. I felt some kind of jolt.

By then, Jake's head was caught in loops. I couldn't see if anyone else was.

<Everyone not caught, get out of here,> he ordered. <Just swim away.>

<And abandon you guys?> Rachel said. <Yeah, right.>

<It's okay,> I said. <I think. I seem to be fine. I don't know what that was, I assume it's something the Controllers need.>

<They injected something into your head, Cassie,> Tobias said as the loops let me go. I swam forward, into the main interior of the tower. <Head injections are not fine.>

<Who cares?> I said. <We'll demorph in a few minutes and it'll heal.> I was able to say this with confidence because I was getting a clear look at the interior of the tower.

The area we were in was like a huge swimming pool, the width of the tower and six or seven stories deep. It wasn't an ideal amount of space for so many sharks, but I could move freely. Below us was a transparent floor that formed the ceiling of a lit, air-filled room. I could make out some blocky furniture inside but it looked empty of people. Above us was the pocket of air and what looked like walkways. Against the far wall were six tubes stretching up to the above floor and down to the below one, presumably extending all the way through the tower. Dropshafts.

If we could get onto those walkways and into the dropshafts, we'd be in. Easy.

Except for the part about demorphing in a tank full of hammerheads.

Jake and Ax swam into the area behind me, both looking none the worse for wear.

<Time, Ax?> Jake asked.

<We have fifty-eight of your minutes remaining in morph, Prince Jake.>

<Plenty of time,> Marco said, swimming up behind us. <I assume we're aiming for those walkways?>

<It seems like the obvious choice,> Jake agreed. <Is everyone here?>

<Still not happy about the head injection thing,> Tobias said, coming onto the scene with Rachel. <But yes.>

<It might be better to try to break into the floor below,> Rachel said, <rather than try to demorph around all these sharks.>

<We'd raise an alarm,> Marco said. <Better to try to sneak in.>

<Also, I don't think six sharks are going to do much to anything that can withstand this kind of water pressure,> Jake added.

<In that case,> Rachel said, <How are we supposed to – aaaargh!>

She wasn't the only one screaming. Sudden pain lanced through my head from nowhere. I fought to keep my own scream private within our little circle of Animorphs and not broadcast it to everyone within range. I could only hope that the other screams and shouts of pain in my mind were similarly private.

<Okay,> Rachel said, <what was that?!>

<No idea,> Tobias said. He sounded shaken. Small wonder.

<I would prefer to avoid that happening again,> Ax said.

<Do you know what it might be, Ax?> Tobias asked.

<I do not.>

<Right,> Marco asked, <if we just focus on getting out of – aaaaargh!>

That pain shot through us again. I looked around for a cause. There... something moving below. Someone in the room underneath us, playing with dials on a console. Were they hurting us? Why?

The other sharks didn't seem to be having problems. They were all moving together in a large circle.

<A formation,> Marco said. <Let's get in formation.>

We did. The pain stopped. A comforting, calming feeling came over my body, kind of like... kind of like sinking into a warm bath.

The sharks broke off into groups of five. We followed suit, but it was impossible to stay together; we were immediately separated. Some kind of lasers activated in the walls, cutting each group of five off from each other. I tried to swim through them; they bounced me back with a heavy jolt.

The other four sharks moved into a sort of formation, leaving an obvious gap. I filled it. That comforting sensation rippled through my body again. We moved into a new formation; I checked the group of sharks next to me to figure out where I needed to be, and I did it. When I was wrong, there was pain. When I was right, there was comfort. It wasn't hard to see what was going on.

These sharks were being trained.

And as we moved through the drills, it wasn't hard to see what they were being trained for. We were moved into groups of seven, then ten. The nature of the formations quickly became apparent. We were taking up positions that allowed for unified attacks, that cut off escape routes for prey. We were hunting as a group.

<Guys,> I said, <I don't think these sharks are Controllers.>

<No,> Rachel said. <They're attack dogs. They're being trained as yeerk-free military units.>

<It is possible that their cranial capacity would not accommodate a yeerk,> Ax said. <They are being put to use regardless.>

<Why? What on Earth could military-trained hammerheads be useful for?>

The lasers disappeared. The hatch opened and sharks started filing back out into the ocean. The room below us emptied.

<Can we get out of here now?> Marco asked. <If I'd wanted to be in a marching band, I'd join the one at school.>

We waited for all the sharks to leave and the room below us to empty before demorphing. Then we quickly morphed birds and flapped our way up to the walkways, where we demorphed again.

“That,” Rachel gasped, “is way too much morphing.”

“We're going to have to do it again,” Jake noted. “We're way too conspicuous here.”

“And we don't want anybody here to recognise us later,” I agreed.

“Insects,” Jake said. “We go insects. Flies.”

<Um,> Tobias said. <I don't have an insect morph.>

Dammit. I knew we'd forgotten something.

“Dammit,” Marco said. “I knew we'd forgotten something.”

<I'm gonna be left out of the mission again, aren't I?>

“A red-tailed hawk flying around here might be a little noticeable,” Jake said apologetically.

“Although they might be happy to have you around,” Marco added. “I bet there are a lot of rats and things down here. I'm sure they'd love to get rid of them.”

If a hawk face could look pitying, Tobias would have looked at Marco pityingly. Instead he looked at him with his normal intense glare. <How would rats get on an underwater base, Marco? Your jokes are really logically inconsistent today. I'm beginning to worry about you.>

“Hey,” Marco said defensively, “my jokes are _always_ logically inconsistent.”

“Maybe we should morph before someone sees us?” Rachel asked.

<I'll keep lookout, then slip out as a shark,> Tobias said instantly. I wasn't sure how useful a lookout was in that situation, but none of us argued. I just focused on the housefly.

My skin hardened and became shiny. My back tingled, and two huge gossamer wings uncurled, too heavy and delicate to use at my full size. I felt my bones dissolve, which is something impossible to get used to. Just as my eyes bulged out and my vision fractured into hundreds of tiny images, I began to shrink.

I'd begun to get the hang of compound sight. The trick was to not treat it like human sight. Just because it used the same sort of sense organ didn't mean it was really the same sense. In the same way that trying to figure out an optical illusion could confuse human sight, trying to get human sight out of fly eyes just confused fly sight. You just kind of had to go with it and accept what the eyes told you without trying to pull the wrong kind of information from them.

It was really, really hard to do for any length of time.

The Animorphs around me were morphing. The fly felt their movement, their proximity. The human in me tried to see the shapes, the colors. I saw Jake's arms thin into little fly arms. I saw Marco's head shrink, looking misshapen in my fragmented vision. I felt a horrible pain in my own head at the sight as I shrank smaller, smaller. Pain was unusual, but I didn't have a moment to muse on it right then.

<Guys,> Tobias said, sounding panicked, <stop morphing! You have to demorph!>

I obeyed instantly and began growing, the pain immediately subsiding. <What?> I asked. <What is it?>

<What happened?> Ax asked. <I am experiencing terrible pain.>

<They put something in our heads,> Tobias said. <Something that wasn't shrinking. It looked about the size of a quarter, bulging out in your heads.> He sounded shaken.

“So we can't do insects?” I asked when I had my mouth back.

“I guess not,” Jake said. “That must be what they're using to control the sharks. Some kind of chip.”

“This is unacceptable,” Marco said flatly. “We cannot have yeerk control devices in our heads. We just can't.”

<Indeed not,> Ax agreed. <We must find a way to remove these immediately.>

They were right. And it was my fault. I'd underestimated the problem. I'd assumed they'd morph away when I knew how inconsistent morphing could be. I'd been arrogant.

But then, I hadn't known just what the yeerks had done. Now that I knew the chip was there, would I be able to morph it? I could do paper.

I could do paper, but not pens. And these were complicated, bulky, unknown devices. I wouldn't even morph an actual quarter, why would I be able to morph a complex piece of machinery the size of one? I was being arrogant again.

“Ax,” I said, “don't you have a translation chip in your head that morphs fine?”

<My chip was implanted before exposure to the _escafil_ modification, > Ax said, sounding almost apologetic. <It is... part of my initial 'scan', I suppose you could say. Besides, you may notice that it is still functional when I am in morph; it is part of my mental Z-space anchor. Even if it were possible to morph these chips in the same manner, having these control chips as a permanent mental modification is not optimal.>

“I don't even want to think about that,” Marco agreed. “We need to get rid of these things.”

<How?> Tobias asked.

“Information,” I said. “We need information. We need to know exactly what they are, where they are, how to remove them.” I stood up to inspect our immediate environment. The walkway stretched over the pool, giving a clear view of the sharks, at least when they were in it; it was currently empty. Within reach was the large needle arm that had implanted us. At one end of the walkway were the dropshafts, as well as several lockers.

Ax inspected the needle arm. I went for the lockers.

“Well, unless we can somehow sneak in and find Ax a computer to hack without morphing small, information might be tricky to get,” Marco said. He seemed jittery. Technically, nobody should be able to see us unless they passed in one of the dropshafts. But that was a very real threat. We couldn't linger long.

I started pulling open lockers. They were not locked. They contained diving supplies; snorkels, wetsuits.

“Ax,” Rachel asked, “what are you doing?”

<I am attempting to deduce the reason for this device,> he explained.

“It's to inject chips in sharks' brains,” Rachel said impatiently. “We just experienced that.”

He shook his head. <Its placement makes little sense. The sharks in this tank are already chipped, or they would not come into this tank. And yet this equipment exists to scan the sharks' brains, judging by the fact that it could identify our lack of chips, and rectify the problem.>

“And is the needle telling you anything?” Marco asked.

<Regrettably not.>

“Then we should move further into the base and find a computer,” I suggested.

“Yeah, except we can't morph small,” Marco reminded me irritably.

I held up something I'd found in a locker, beneath the wetsuits. A brown jumpsuit with a gold collar. There was a small pile of them in there.

“What if we didn't need to morph?” I asked.


	7. Chapter 7

“For Ax and Tobias, fair enough,” Marco said, “but if the rest of us are seen by the wrong person...” He glanced at Jake. “We don't know who's on this base. We could easily be recognised.”

“True,” I said, trying not to sound disheartened. There had to be a way. There _had_ to. But aside from human and insect, we didn't have inconspicuous morphs.

This was my fault. I was the animal person. I should've made sure we were more prepared, prepared for _anything_.

Rachel snapped her fingers. “Cassie. Didn't you do a combined human morph once? For the whole Zone 91 thing?”

I nodded. “It's trickier than normal morphing,” I said. “You need really good control to look... well, realistic.” I bit my lip. “But it's worth a try, I guess. I think we can all manage it.”

“Right.” Marco nodded, businesslike. “Cassie has a Rachel morph, I have Jake. So if Jake acquires Cassie and Rachel acquires me, we'll all have a different DNA mix to draw on.” He lifted his arm and winked at Rachel. She rolled her eyes and pressed a couple of fingers against the back of his hand.

Jake wrapped his own hand around my arm, his hot skin a pleasant contrast to the chill air above the pool. He gave me a crooked smile. “If I may?”

I nodded and closed my eyes. I felt a wave of sluggish contentment wash over me – the sensation of being acquired. I relaxed into it.

<Wait a minute,> Tobias said.

I wrenched my eyes open. “What? What is it?”

<Rachel and Jake look really similar,> he said. <They're cousins, and a lot of their features are the same. If you all kind of adopt each others' features in a circle like this, you're going to look really similar.>

“Point,” Rachel said, “but since we can't acquire your human DNA, Tobias...” she glanced at me for confirmation, and I nodded, not that I'd tried with Tobias specifically... “we only have a limited number of DNA sources.”

“Wait. No.” Marco grinned. “Jake, don't you have a human morph?”

Jake went red. “Oh. That.”

I frowned. I was pretty sure Jake didn't have a human morph according to my list. “When did you acquire a human?”

“Um, you remember when Rachel was dealing with that crocodile allergy?”

That wasn't an event anybody was likely to forget. I tried to remember what the boys had done at the time.

My eyes widened. “You went on a surveillance mission. For...”

“Jake has a morph of Jeremy Jason McCole,” Marco crowed, “Mister Brad Pitt lips.”

Jake went even redder. “It was necessary,” he muttered. “We would've been caught otherwise.”

“When we're not in about five kinds of danger at once, you are definitely telling us this story,” Rachel said.

“Can we discuss this later?” Tobias asked. He was already human, and watching us impatiently.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for me to tell them how the combined morph worked, even though I thought it was pretty self-explanatory.

“You need to try to control the morph to get the specific features you want,” I said, “so that they come together as a normal-looking face. So you need to be careful.” To demonstrate, I focused on my hair and on Rachel's hair; I let it grow, let it flatten and pale just a little, without letting it go blonde and straight. I let my lips and nose thin, enough so they were no longer recognisable as my lips and nose. And then I stopped. “We just need to not be quite recognisable as ourselves,” I added. “It doesn't have to be a big change. Oh, and obviously, this would be a really awful morph to get trapped in, so watch the clock.”

“Yeah, I do not want to be part-Marco forever,” Rachel said with a sly glance. He jokingly punched her arm.

“Actually, I meant because we're not morphing one person with combined DNA – we're morphing some foreign tissues into our normal bodies,” I explained. “If we were stuck like this, our immune systems would probably attack our new body parts. There might be an inbuilt defence against that in the technology, but it's not something I'd want to test.”

That pretty much killed everyone's joking mood.

Ax didn't volunteer any information on the immune system thing, so I kept assuming the worst as I watched my friends morph. Soon, I was surrounded by extremely familiar strangers. Rachel, now with coffee-colored skin and several inches shorter, ran fingers through her short black hair and, even without being able to see it, grimaced. “Your haircut is awful, Marco.”

“You're just jealous because I'm now taller than you,” Marco shrugged, imposing his own inflections on Jake's voice. He grinned with perfect white teeth.

Jake, at least, possessed some features that didn't belong to another of my friends, even if they belonged to somebody I no longer had any respect for. Jeremy Jason's lips rested above Jake's square jaw, his hair hugged Jake's ears. My eyes were nestled above his nose, scanning the area. The overall effect wasn't as cute as Jeremy Jason or as Jake normally, but it was a passable face.

Tobias looked at us, gaze shifting from one person to the next rapidly. “This is creepy,” he stated flatly. “Really, really creepy.”

“What is creepy?” Ax asked. “Cree-pee?” We were sort of used to Ax looking like a combination of all of us, at least. Still, we looked... similar to each other. Way too similar. Like a large group of siblings or something.

“Not important,” Jake said. “Let's get dressed.” He raised an eyebrow at Marco, who was staring at him, mouth hanging slightly open. “What?”

“Oh. Nothing. Nothing.” Marco grabbed a jumpsuit from the locker and started measuring the sleeves against his arms.

We had to morph a bit more to all adjust our height to perfectly fit in the sizes of jumpsuits provided. We ran out of gold-collared jumpsuits and Marco and Tobias ended up with red collars instead. We hoped that the difference wasn't important enough to make us look suspicious.

“First order of business,” Jake said, “we locate a computer with records of what this base is for, and some blueprints or something so we can formulate a plan to destroy it if need be.”

“While avoiding the Leerans,” Tobias said.

“And the Vissers,” Ax added.

“And the sharks,” said Marco.

“And anybody liable to order us to do jobs we don't know how to do,” I remarked.

“And hoping these brain chips don't do anything to kill us or blow our cover,” Rachel said, scratching at the back of her head.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “And without dying.” He grimaced. “Anybody remember when it was all morphing horses and flies and investigating harmless stuff at air force bases?”

“That was two weeks ago, Jake.”

“I know. That's the sad part.”


	8. Chapter 8

We took a dropshaft down to the room below the tank, which was empty when we arrived. None of us needed to be told what to do; Ax and Marco went straight to the most important-looking console, Rachel and Jake stationed themselves behind the dropshafts in case of trouble, and Tobias and I started sweeping the room for anything relevant or useful.

“Battle morphs?” Rachel asked.

“These half-morphs are tricky enough,” Marco pointed out. “If we keep morphing in and out of them we're going to wear ourselves out.”

Rachel shrugged and picked up a big, heavy metal chair instead.

There was little in the room beyond computers and chairs, but Tobias prodded me and pointed up at the ceiling. The center was taken up by the transparent bottom of the shark area, but along the edges were large, flat, white screens. They looked like display screens of some sort.

“What are they?” I asked.

“No idea,” he said.

Suddenly, they lit up with dozens of little red dots. We both jumped and looked around. Ax was tapping away at his console.

“I am playing back footage,” he explained. “They track the position of sharks in the tank.”

I watched the dot on the screen. They moved in regimented ways. Occasionally, one would stray out of line, but then it would suddenly move back.

“I know that pattern,” Marco said. “Those two on the edge there should move up towards the top any second.”

Even as he spoke, two little red dots rose.

“How did you know that?” I asked.

“If you're gonna fight aliens you need to play more video games, Cassie.” He shook his head. “It's the kind of strategy you'd use to cut off a short-sighted... wait, what's that?”

Ax had loaded another piece of footage. This time, there was a green dot. The red dots moved about looking a little confused. It took them some time, but eventually, they organised into an attack pattern. Several red dots enveloped the green one, and soon it was gone.

“Training regimens,” I said. “They're the training drills for the sharks.”

“This isn't guard duty,” Rachel announced from her position from the door. “They're making an army. A shark army.”

She was right. The green-dot regimens weren't about guarding something from the green dots. They were hunting them down, cutting them off, and killing them.

“Why?” I asked. “I mean, we end up in the water sometimes, but it's normally because we chased the yeerks in here. This isn't a battle that's happening in the ocean.”

“Not on Earth,” Tobias said, “but what about Leera? They're amphibious, aren't they?”

“The surface of Leera is covered mostly in water,” Ax put in.

We were silent for about five seconds.

“Mind readers!” Jake slapped his forehead. “Duh! They're sharks. They have no idea about the yeerks' overall plans or even the immediate implications of whatever battle they're in. Sending Controllers into battle against Leerans is like broadcasting your plans to the enemy, but sharks, with a Controller general far out of range...”

“Don't they have, I dunno, little ships for that or something?” Marco asked.

“Unpiloted craft can be difficult to build and program,” Ax pointed out. “I have uncovered some disturbing information in this system about the method of locating the sharks.” He paused for a moment and then solemnly added, “Sturrr-binnnng.”

“What is it, Ax?” Jake asked.

“The locators are built into the control chips.”

“Are you saying,” Marco said, “that if somebody decided to check on where all the sharks were right now, they'd see six sharks in this room?”

“Indeed.”

“Okay, we definitely have to get these things out. They'll blow our cover.”

Rachel bit her lip. “I agree, but the chances – ”

“Not necessarily here, Rachel. But what if we fail to destroy this stuff? You want the yeerks to be wondering why there's one of their hammerheads hanging around your house?”

She paled.

“There is a solution,” Ax said. “According to this data, the yeerks are using a primitive quantum-decay system to keep their locators distance-independent.” He chuckled in thought-speak as he spoke. “The chips' locator systems are very delicate. This is probably why they had the replacement system set up in the tank itself, so that any trained shark who could not be read by their system could be easily re-chipped.”

“How delicate?” Jake asked.

“A strong, fluctuating electrical field could easily collapse the identification pattern.”

“Can you do it here?”

“Yes, with a few minutes.”

“Do it.”

Ax told us what he needed, and we started pulling computers apart to get parts. Rachel nodded to Jake, and he came over to help while she kept post on the dropshafts, looking as casual as possible about holding an unnecessary metal chair. We tried to cannibalise the computers in a way that wouldn't look suspicious to anybody actually going past in the dropshafts.

“But if they have to re-chip the sharks when their identification chips randomly fail,” Jake frowned, “won't they lose track of which shark is actually which?”

“Why would they care?” Marco asked. “The sharks show up, they train. Does it matter which is which?”

I nodded. “This is probably a pilot study, to test the viability of training large groups of sharks like this,” I said. “If they need to specifically train them for missions on Leera, they'll probably use better equipment.”

We handed our stuff to Ax, who quickly wired it into a small, handheld electrical device. “I can collapse the identification patterns non-invasively if you would allow me to pass a strong field through your heads,” He explained.

“Is that dangerous to humans?” Jake asked.

Ax frowned, like he wasn't sure if Jake was joking or not. “No, Prince Jake.”

Marco stepped forward. “Make with the andalite magic, Ax-man. Although I must say, your device does _not_ look high-tech.”

“It is not high-tech. Eck-kuh. It is a very simple device, well within human technological capabilities.” He ran the device around the back of Marco's head, about an inch away from his skull, while it made a loud noise. “It is done.”

“I didn't feel anything,” Marco said.

“If you had, that could indicate a problem.” One by one, he ran the device over each of our heads, and his own. Then he quickly disassembled it and we put the parts back in the computers. I was pretty sure I'd put my parts back in wrong – I knew nothing about computers. But hopefully, some dead computers wouldn't raise suspicion.

“So the base is to train a shark army for the invasion of an alien planet,” Tobias said. “Do you guys ever feel like maybe we live in a comic?”

“People don't die in comics,” Marco said grimly.

“Thanks for that, Captain Killjoy,” Tobias grumbled. He side-eyed Marco, then raised a questioning eyebrow at me. I shrugged.

“People die in comics all the time,” Jake muttered under his breath to me as we headed for the dropshafts.

  



	9. Chapter 9

The base was full of Controllers, but none of them gave us a second look as we moved through the base. Most of them were human, with a few hork-bajir and a surprisingly high number of taxxons working at computer consoles covered in levers and buttons. I knew taxxons were often pilots, but it was still weird to watch the murderous, cannibalistic caterpillars manipulating electronics.

There weren't many Leerans, but those we saw, we gave a wide berth. A very wide berth. This didn't look as strange as I would have expected – we were far from the only ones. I guess even Controllers had secrets.

After about an hour, we found a large, empty room and locked ourselves in to demorph and collect our thoughts. It was something of a comfort to relax into my own form, a body I was comfortable with and knew how to use, for a few minutes.

“Okay,” Marco said, “so: giant base. Shark training. Not much else seems to be going on, at least not that we can tell because all the computers likely to have useful information in them are manned. What now?”

“Self destruct,” Rachel and Tobias said in unison.

“Can we do that?” Jake asked.

<Given that this is a covert installation, it will probably have self destruction capability,> Ax said slowly.

I raised my hand, as if I was in school. “Um. There are a lot of people in here. Given the nature of the installation, I'm betting most of them are scientists and pencil-pushers and soforth.”

“Really, Cassie?” Marco shook his head. “They're evil alien invaders who are training up an army to invade another planet!”

“They're the _slaves_ of evil alien invaders,” I pointed out.

“Yeah. And guess what? Sometimes innocent people die. Sometimes they need to die to protect the world. You're the one who said, right from the beginning, that our lives were worth basically nothing compared to the safety of this planet. You're the one who waved me off every time I pointed out that we were volunteering to die for basically no reason. Well, now these people get to die heroically to protect a planet.”

I narrowed my eyes. “We _chose_ to – ”

“We chose nothing, Cassie! We were minding our own business when a blue alien centaur fell out of the sky and said 'hey, your planet's doomed, and you're the only people who can keep it in one piece until we get back to clean up our own war!' There was no choice here, Cassie. I think we've proven that – I think I've proven that, because every time I try to do the sensible thing and get on with my life some new urgent thing drags me back. And you guys didn't choose either, you just didn't fight against it as hard. No, let's make no mistake here. People are dying in this war. It's _war_. And eventually, those people will be us, but hopefully not today. Today it's just gonna be everyone else in this reverse fishtank.”

“Ooookay,” Jake said slowly. “So let's all just take a moment to calm down.”

Marco glared at him. Jake put a hand on his shoulder.

“Dude,” Jake said.

“It's fine. I'm _fine_.” He shook Jake off. “Sorry. Let's get back on topic.”

<As I was saying,> Ax said, <it is likely that the base does have some sort of self-destruct function. But if it does, it would be extremely high security. Presumably the most high security function on the base. It will be protected.>

“Can you hack the security, Ax?” Jake asked.

Ax twisted one hoof against the ground, which probably would have looked natural on grass but definitely did not on tile. <... Probably not,> he admitted reluctantly. <This is yeerk encryption, and of course yeerk encryption is fairly primitive, but... still, given the security level...>

“It's fine, Ax,” Jake assured him. “Your skills have been extremely valuable so far.”

“Well,” Rachel said, “unless somebody has a lot of explosives lying around, I don't know what – ”

And then, everything hurt.


	10. Chapter 10

At least nobody screamed. Oh, Tobias screamed in our heads, but he seemed to retain the sense to keep it between us. The pain drove the breath from our bodies and paralysed our vocal cords. Ax watched nervously as the rest of us all collapsed to the floor in silent agony. My limbs... I'd say they were on fire, but it was more that I didn't even remember having limbs; the pain was too intense to be confined to a single location. A second later, though, it was gone.

“What,” Rachel gasped, “was that?”

“That felt somewhat like a yeerk control chip,” I gasped back.

“Yeah,” Marco said, “but Ax disabled those. Right?” He glared accusingly at Ax.

<I disabled the identification and locators,> Ax explained. <The actual chip functions are somewhat more... robust.>

“Can you disable them?” Jake asked in that tempered voice that means his last nerve is being slowly ground down.

<Not without directly accessing them.>

<Why weren't you affected, Ax?> Tobias asked.

<Without understanding exactly how the chip functions, I... cannot be sure.>

But I was pretty sure I knew. “Birds, humans and sharks all have very similar primitive brains,” I explained. “The more complicated the animal's mind, the more stuff is layered onto the brain, but the old, primitive stuff doesn't really change. If these chips are placed to interface with shark pleasure and pain centers, then there's no reason they shouldn't have the same function in us.” I glanced at Ax. “Ax, presumably, has a different brain structure.”

“So he's immune, at least,” Jake said thoughtfully.

“Until he morphs human,” I corrected. “Which he'll need to do to move around this base.”

<How often is this likely to happen?> Tobias asked. <Knowing that may help us at least avoid looking suspicious.>

I shook my head. “How are we supposed to know? How are we even supposed to know what the sharks are being punished for? Or why it included us, even though they don't know where we are?”

<The obvious possibility is that the signal was sent to any chip not within the shark tank,> As pointed out, <to train them to come at the sound of the alarm.>

“I didn't hear any alarm,” Jake said.

“We have human ears now,” I shrugged. “And we're in air.”

“So without knowing the schedule, that still doesn't help us.”

“If we shut down the facility, we shut down these chip signals,” Rachel said. “Then we can worry about getting rid of the actual chips.”

“Which leads us back to the original question,” Marco said. “How?”

We were all silent for a moment.

“Ax,” Jake said, “is there any chance at all that you might be able to crack the self-destruct security?”

<A small one, Prince Jake,> Ax said reluctantly. <But I have never excelled with computers. I would not gamble our lives on it.>

“Good, because we won't need to. I propose we try to blend in, try to let Ax get a look at the system, and get a better idea of what our chances of pulling off a self-destruct are. Meanwhile, we have some people try to get a feel for the base, and find any other vulnerabilities we might be able to exploit, either physical or political. Fair enough?”

<We definitely need more information,> Tobias agreed.

“Hooray,” Rachel said, “a scouting mission. We all love those.”

I frowned at her. “We can't move forward without – ”

“I know, I know. Blend in with the yeerk forces while avoiding mind-readers and under the threat of random brain electrocution. Fine.”

Marco nodded, once. “We should break into small teams,” he suggested. “We might draw attention walking around as a crowd of unnervingly similar teenagers.”

“Good idea,” Jake said. “Marco and I will look for any other vulnerabilities the yeerks might have down here. We need somebody to go with Ax for this self-destruct thing, and another team for scouting vulnerabilities.”

I glanced at Rachel. The obvious team-up was her and me, as best friends, and Ax and Tobias. But Ax, in human morph, among humans, was... dangerous. And Tobias was kind of out of practice at being human, too.

“Rachel, you should go with Ax,” I said. “He's the most likely to need some physical backup and you're our best combatant. Tobias and I can try to blend in and look for other means of attack.”

Tobias and Rachel shared a long look. She bit her lip.

“Alright,” she said. “That makes sense.”

Ax didn't look any more happy about the team selection than she was. That, at least, I could understand. We'd tried to accommodate Ax as much as we could, but in the end, he'd had to adapt to our ways, and I didn't think he really 'got' democracy. We often had to prod a lot to get a vote, or even an opinion, out of him. He'd easily accepted Jake as his commanding officer, his Prince, and he and Tobias seemed to have become really good friends living out in the forest with nobody else to talk to a lot of the time, but as for the rest of us? Oh, I was sure Ax liked us... or didn't dislike us, at any rate. But he was being sent on a dangerous and very vague mission, partnered with somebody of uncertain seniority and probably out of contact with his Prince for long periods of time. I could see why he'd prefer to work with Jake.

Jake had been pretty explicit in his intent to work with Marco, though, and Ax wasn't the type to protest an order based on personal feelings of insecurity. He just stood and swayed his tail a little.

Nobody looked all that happy with the team selection, come to think of it. Or maybe it was being in an underwater yeerk base that we were unhappy with.

“Alright,” Jake said, clapping his hands together. “Let's morph and get out of here before somebody walks in on us.”

We morphed. I inspected my morphed face in the mirror, memorised it so that I'd be consistent. I gave myself a name and a brief background in case I needed to lie on the spot. Alexis Clay. Alexis was a cool name.

I smoothed my brown overalls, straightened the gold collar, exchanged a nod with Tobias, and marched out into the yeerk base.


	11. Chapter 11

Tobias, to his credit, made an effort to keep his movements natural. He kept squinting at everything as if he was short-sighted and he did not like people being too close to him, but he didn't look _too_ odd. In a way, the mission could be good for him. It might get him acquainted with being human again. Not that I expected him to get himself stuck again; I mean, I could see why being one step above a homeless teenager and nearly defenceless against the yeerks wasn't appealing. But I'd been kind of worried about what being a bird full-time was doing to his psyche. I was still worried. And there wasn't a therapist in the world who could help him with that stuff.

We got about two rooms away before somebody shouted after us.

“Hey! You two!”

We froze. Looked at each other. We couldn't morph, not out in the open; we couldn't give the impression that we were anything other than andalites. I didn't have an andalite morph, and Tobias would have to go from human to bird...

“Yes, you! Gofers!”

We turned. A woman in a navy jumpsuit gestured us over, looking irritable.

“No, no, I only need one of you. Girl, go about your business. Boy, come here. I have some files I need you to retrieve.”

Tobias shot me a helpless, panicked look. I shrugged.

“Don't take all day about it!”

With no real option, he headed over to see what the woman wanted. With no real option, I kept moving.

Well. That went well.

“We _planned_ this,” I muttered very quietly under my breath as I followed the flow of Controllers toward a dropshaft. “It's supposed to go _neatly_.” And yet, I'd somehow lost my partner in less than five minutes. Wonderful.

I got off one floor below, hoping to stay within Tobias' thought-speak range so he could bring me to him when her was finished with whatever the woman wanted. The humans around me were dressed mostly in jumpsuits, with a handful of casual outfits among them. They were very clearly colour-coded, with blue-dressed people at various consoles, brown-dressed people like myself rushing about with coffee and arms of paper and one or two with brooms and dusting cloths, and the occasional green-clad person striding about with great purpose, carrying clipboards. Nearly everybody about me had a gold collar, although there was also the occasional red. Hork-bajir wore armbands, mostly white or yellow although a few were green or blue, with a gold stripe along the top. Nobody had bothered to color-code the taxxons in any noticeable way. How would you even clothe a taxxon? Put ribbons on its claws?

Right. Time to blend in.

That turned out to be very easy, in fact. I just walked in, didn't look too busy, and waited for somebody to give me an order.

“You! Gofer!”

I turned. The person shouting at me was a grumpy-looking middle-aged man in blue. “Yes, sir?”

“Coffee. Whatever kind they can make quickly, as big as they make it. Go.”

I hesitated. The immediate problem, of course, was that I had no idea where to get coffee. The man narrowed his eyes. “Let me guess. New on the base?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

He rolled his eyes. “This substandard training, I swear. Out that door. Left down a small corridor. Second right. There's a little cafeteria. Your host will recognise it. Get coffee there. And bring it to me.”

“Yes, sir.” I got out of there before I did anything that might make him suspicious.

I followed his directions. The man making the coffee was actually kind of cute. It was a pity he was a slave to the alien slug in his brain.

Soon, I was fetching random files for people and delivering messages, and nobody questioned my presence at all. Nobody recognised me, of course, so if I seemed confused they all just assumed I was new, made an annoyed remark about how bad the base's training was, and told me exactly where things were kept. So long as I found a place to demorph every once in a while, I could keep it up indefinitely.

I learned a lot about yeerk filing systems that day.

It was kind of frightening, in a way. I could ask for any file, give any message, and people just assumed I was obeying orders. Nobody questioned my presence or asked for identification. Of course, I didn't know nearly enough about the system to spread false information or find important documents, but the complete lack of security suggested that the yeerks were not at all worried about disloyalty or betrayal in their own ranks. Come to think of it, security cameras had never really been a thing we'd needed to deal with when fighting yeerks, either. I couldn't imagine a human organisation operating with such trust and efficiency. Of course, I couldn't imagine a human organisation where the slightest hint of failure resulted in decapitation, either. Sometimes I thought that if we failed to expose the yeerks, the trail of dead and missing persons Visser Three left behind would do it for us.

After not hearing from Tobias for about three hours, I started to worry. But surely... surely, if he'd been captured or something, I'd know. An alarm would go off. Or something.

Unless they noticed he was posing as a Controller, and wanted to scoop up the rest of us without alerting us.

No, he'd have warned us via thought-speak if that was the case, surely. He was probably doing what I was doing – blending in, trying to figure out enough of the filing system or the ranking system or something to glean some useful information. I pushed the thought aside and glanced at a little office clock sitting on somebody's desk. Time to demorph again.

Marco hadn't been wrong; these partial morphs were going to get tiring really quick. I put on my 'I'm busy, don't disturb me' face and rushed briskly toward the nearest bathroom (all the bathrooms on the base were unisex for some reason) to lock myself in a stall, demorph, and remorph. I was checking the details of my face in the mirror when a green-jumpsuited man came in behind me. Obviously I couldn't morph with him watching, so I figured what I had would have to be good enough and gave him a polite nod as I headed for the exit.

And then, pain tore through my mind.

Like last time, I didn't scream – my throat and lungs seemed to seize up in agony. Fortunately, I wasn't morphed enough to thoughtspeak, or a fair chunk of the base could have heard my mental screaming. I just doubled over and sank to the floor while sharp, unrelenting, unending pain stabbed at my mind, my eyes, my legs, at parts I didn't know I had; while I forgot what parts I did have, and while the man watched me with some concern.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

I couldn't answer. I nodded, feebly. Apparently, that didn't convince him, and he crouched next to me, a concerned frown on his face. He looked nice, I realised dimly. About mid-thirties, with gentle eyes. He could've been somebody's father. He might, in fact, have been somebody's father – or at least, the face might have belonged to somebody's father. The frown it showed was put there by an evil alien invader, as was the hand that rested gently on my shoulder. He waited patiently until the pain subsided enough for me to breathe, and then offered a hand to help me to my feet.

Fervently wishing I was a better liar, I started trying to piece together something, anything, that would explain what he'd just seen.

“What's your name?” he asked.

Oh. I had an answer for that. “Alexis,” I said.

He shook his head, looking even more concerned. “No, kid. _Your_ name.”

Yeerk name. Right. I searched my memory for yeerk names. “Iniss. Iniss... Three Seven Five.” I'd chosen the numbers at random; hopefully the real Iniss Three Seven Five wasn't super-famous or anything. I was also keenly aware that it sounded kind of suspicious to be so uncertain of my own name. But the Controller didn't seem to notice. He just nodded. “Pleased to meet you, Iniss. I am Talan Four Four Nine. Now tell me, how long has it been since you've been to the Pool?”

I could have laughed. He thought I was starving.

“I'm on schedule,” I mumbled with a dismissive wave.

He raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that? You sure you're not craving? Going to the Pool helps, you know.”

I had no idea what any of that meant, so I remained silent. He took my hand. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” I asked as he lead me out of the room.

“To the cafeteria. We've got to get some food into that host of yours. You look like you've been on your feet all day.”


	12. Chapter 12

The cafeteria wasn't like the one at the Yeerk Pool. Oh, it looked the same; all cafeterias do. We could have been at school and the room would look basically the same. The food was high in fat and salt, mostly chips and burgers; stuff that would fill people up quickly and let them get back to work. The tables were long and orderly and full of people eating off trays and talking to each other. They didn't talk as much as kids at school – those that wanted to eat alone and in silence were eating alone and in silence, without drawing sneers or judging looks. They didn't talk as much as the voluntary hosts in the Yeerk Pool, either. Their conversation was low, relaxed and casual. There was no strain in anybody's voice as they tried to ignore screaming and sobbing behind them. There was nobody trying to avoid looking in any specific direction. Apart from people who were in a hurry, there was very little tension. These weren't temporarily free people trying to ignore the fact that they'd betrayed their planet. These were yeerks.

I lined up behind Talan and, at his insistence, took a burger and about three times as many fries as I expected to be able to eat. Which was a little hypocritical, since he only took a couple of scoops of pasta for himself. Before we left the line, he also plonked a large coffee on my tray.

“I... I mean, my host... is too young to drink too much coffee,” I protested.

He laughed loudly, as if I'd said something hilarious. We found a relatively empty table and sat down.

“Iniss,” he said.

“Yeah?” I inspected my fries. Way too much salt.

“You need to take care of yourself,” he said.

“I am,” I mumbled, putting a fry in my mouth so I had an excuse not to elaborate and say anything suspicious.

“Sure you are. Look, I get it. Some things seem exciting at first. You get drawn in by the sales pitch and by the chances at promotion and it all sounds great and you think you're swimming with the tide, but trust me. It's gonna get bad. And by the time you even notice, it'll be too late.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said truthfully.

He sighed impatiently. “We're just going to pretend I didn't see what I saw? You think I don't know what it means?”

I had to get rid of this guy somehow. I glared at him. “Why do you care? You don't even know me.”

“No. You're right; I don't know you. And I'm guessing that nobody in Visser One's little tower here knows you. I'm guessing, based on your behaviour and the fact that you think any of this is a good idea on any level, that you've just come over from Visser Three's employ. And hey, there, I'm sure you were very efficient. I'm sure you met his standards of what makes a good employee really well. But things are different here. If anybody else – anybody else – had've walked in on you, do you think you'd be sitting here right now? No, you'd have been reported. A new kid like you doesn't want to get reported for this sort of thing. We've lost people – _I've_ lost people – who didn't understand how this thing gets its hooks in, how it dries them out.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. For somebody giving a passionate speech, Talan was being really vague about what he was lecturing me about. Probably because we were in a crowded cafeteria. That was okay. Him being vague meant I could be vague, and that meant I might have a chance of getting out of there without him getting suspicious.

“If you say so,” I muttered sullenly.

Talan clicked his tongue in frustration. “Kandrona's light, save me from ambitious grubs,” he muttered under his breath. To me, he said, “Promise me you'll take the next boat out to the Pool.”

“I told you, I'm on sched – ”

“Promise me.”

“Fine. Okay. I promise.”

“Good.” He gripped my shoulder. “I can't _make_ you make good choices. But you only get one life. Use it well.”

I stared after him as he left. Well. That was baffling.

He'd been right about one thing, though; the food was doing me good. After all the morphing and flying and fighting sharks and carrying files about, I was beat. And the fat and sugar was helping. It also raised another conundrum – namely, how were we going to sleep? I assumed there were dormitories somewhere, but it's not like we had assigned beds. And even if we could get them, we couldn't sleep in morph. Jake, Rachel, Marco and I might be able to pull it off, but Tobias and Ax certainly couldn't. That in itself put us on a sort of time limit. Not that I knew how often andalites slept. Or even _if_ andalites slept.

<Cassie,> Tobias said in my mind. I stopped eating.

<Cassie, I assume you can't answer me. I've found something. I'm on level 47, when you're free.>

Well, maybe we wouldn't need to be there long enough for sleep to be a problem. I took the coffee with me.


	13. Chapter 13

We gathered all the Animorphs and locked ourselves in a storage closet to examine what Tobias had brought – a map of the base.

“Okay,” he said, “so we have the island, and here the base stretches out along the seafloor a ways, and then we have the tower.” He traced along the map with his finger as he spoke. “Visser Three's operations are mostly along the seafloor. Visser One is in the tower. We have two launch point in the tower – the hammerhead tank is also a launch point for submersibles, and the top of the tower extends above the surface to launch boats.”

“Why, though?” Rachel asked. “Why not just launch from the island? And wouldn't it be easier to put the shark training tank thing there too instead of building a tower?”

“I think we can answer that one,” Jake said. “Visser Three has stopped Visser One from using the island somehow. He's blocking her with bureaucratic red tape.”

“So she had to build this tower part instead?” I frowned. “That seems... inefficient.”

“Imagine how much time it took them to get this set up,” Marco crowed. “These two are doing the sitcom thing where kids divide a room in half with a line. I bet they could've moved a lot faster if they just built all this shark stuff near the island instead of in the tower.”

Jake nodded. “Ax, Rachel? How did you go?”

“Judging by the encryption on the secure files we have been able to locate, there is perhaps a fifty per cent chance that I can break the self destruct encryption,” Ax said, “but I believe that it may only be possible from specific, presumably guarded, terminals. There is no such capability in the terminals that I have been able to access.”

“Major console rooms are here,” Tobias said, poking as marked areas with one finger. There were three. One was near the bottom of the tower, and two were in the 'Visser Three' portion of the base.

“Those would be the best places to look for a self-destruct,” Ax said.

“If the Vissers are playing political tug-of-war with the base then one of the Visser Three rooms are probably the best bet,” I said. “I mean, maybe all of them can set off a self-destruct, maybe none of them can. But given that Visser Three seems to have the most control of this base...”

Jake nodded. “Good point. We need to get Ax into there.”

“What are the chances that those console rooms are just full of Leerans?” Rachel asked.

“Probably not,” I said slowly. “I mean, Visser Three... doesn't seem the type to want underlings reading his mind. And since the Leerans here are probably all Visser One's troops...”

“Still,” Marco said, “we should take as few chances as possible.”

“Right,” Jake said. “So, fifty per cent chance of a self-destruct. That's looking like our best plan.”

“Given the circumstances, though, we should be careful of the risk we put ourselves at,” Tobias said. “I mean, if we screw up, it might not be all that easy to flee.”

“If this goes off without a hitch, it won't be easy to flee,” Rachel pointed out.

“So,” Jake said, “plan?”

Marco leaned over the map. “We cause a distraction,” he said. “We stage an andalite bandit attack somewhere that'll draw troops and leave a console room clear, and send Ax in to try the self-destruct.”

Rachel chewed her lip. “Yeerks can count,” she said. “If they notice we're not attacking with all six...”

“In the chaos of battle? I'm sure we can fake it.”

She nodded. “Probably. But we'll want to make our attack do the most damage possible, too. To draw a good response, and in case this self destruct thing doesn't work.”

“Um,” I said. “Do we have an exit strategy? I mean, for when the base does – or doesn't – explode?”

“Hammerhead,” Tobias shrugged.

“We'll need to be high up enough for hammerheads to survive, then.”

“How deep can they go?”

“I've no idea,” I admitted.

“Then we'll just have to hope, I guess.”

“I don't like all the different levels of uncertainty in this plan,” Jake frowned.

“Me either,” Marco admitted, “but if we're going to do something, it has to be soon. We nearly blew our covers with the latest brain shock thing, there are psychic frogs running around... we can't blend in forever.”

“We could let it go, you know,” he said. “If it's too risky, we can't do it. Fair enough.”

Marco shook his head. “We're here. This is a big opportunity. And we can't have Leerans running about our planet, which means we can't let the yeerks have them.”

“Setting back the invasion of the Leeran homeworld could strike a major blow to the yeerks, Prince Jake,” Ax added. Ax, who wasn't even sure whether he _could_ set the self-destruct.

“We're here,” Rachel shrugged. “We might as well _try_ to kick yeerk butt.”

Jake looked from Marco, to Ax, to Rachel. “Cassie? Tobias?”

“We've gone on missions more suicidal than this before,” Tobias said, as if that was somehow a good thing.

“We can't allow this base to stand,” I agreed. “And I can't think of a safe way to act now, but like Marco says, every minute we don't act we're in danger anyway.”

“Okay, then,” Jake said. “Okay.” He looked back down at the map.

“We should stage the diversion in the major console room at the base of the tower,” Marco suggested, circling it on the map with his finger.

“Why?” Rachel asked.

“Because, one: I think it might be in thought-speak range from the nearest 'Visser Three' console room.” He looked at me questioningly. I nodded. “Two: it's an important room, important enough to need to defend, and a realistic prime target for an attack, lessening the chances that they'll realise it's a distraction. And three: it's very close to the main base but is technically in Visser One's domain. If these two are indeed playing political tug-of-war, then Visser Three would probably jump at the chance to defend this room, even though Visser One's troops can presumably handle it fine. It would give the impression that she can't manage her own defence.”

“It's deep,” I said doubtfully. “Can't guarantee an easy ocean escape.”

“The ocean is already full of trained sharks and probably the occasional taxxon, remember?” Marco said. “It might be better to try to make for the island instead.”

“Through the base? When we can't morph small?” Probably not as big a problem as it could have been. We could morph birds, after all. At least, we should be able to. Tobias had demorphed with no problems. I still thought the ocean was a safer bet, as the hammerheads had ignored us just fine the last time we were in hammerhead morph, but being unsure about the depth...

“Okay,” Jake said. “Ax and Rachel, make for the console room as soon as you can. Everyone else, get in place for a distraction. We attack on Ax's signal.”

“My signal?” Ax asked.

“You guys will know when you're in position, and Rachel can't thought-speak,” Jake explained.

“Yes, Prince Jake.”

“Let's do it!” Rachel said.

“Indeed.” Marco rubbed his hands together. “Let us do it.”


	14. Chapter 14

We split up. Rachel and Ax headed for the target console room, and the rest of us headed for the decoy console room. The room had two entrances, and we decided we'd attack from both ends at once. Jake and Tobias went to find somewhere private to get into battle morphs on one side of the room; Marco and I found a janitor's closet on the other. The great thing about being teamed with Marco was that his battle morph had hands. So we could, you know, close doors to morph behind.

The closet we found was way too close to the console room for my taste – I kept worrying that the people in there could hear us whispering and undressing. I demorphed and morphed wolf, as quickly as I could, ready for the attack command. Marco took his time; there wouldn't be much free room in the closet once he was the size of a gorilla.

<Come on, they could signal any minute,> I said as he fumbled with the buttons on his jumpsuit.

“Calm down,” he whispered, “they still have to get through to – ”

The closet opened.

A hork-bajir glared into the closet. Marco stared back at him, demorphed, expression like a deer in headlights. I pressed back into what little cover the shelves of cleaning supplies offered.

I'd forgotten that hork-bajir have excellent hearing.

But hork-bajir also don't have the best eyesight, and he didn't even notice me as he looked Marco up and down. “You late. Visser waiting in control room. Come now.”

I couldn't kill the hork-bajir, not where he was standing, not without raising an alarm. I couldn't do anything as Marco hurriedly rebuttoned the jumpsuit and stepped out into the corridor. The janitor's closet was barely a few steps away from the door to the console room, and Marco left the door open a little, so I was able to watch his back as the hork-bajir lead him to the room, announced “I found one, Visser,” and was quickly dismissed. I was even able to slink across the short distance myself, duck into the room and hide under a desk while nobody was looking. Despite being full of neat rows of desks with computers, there were very few people in the room. A few human-Controllers sat pecking at computers. A Leeran-Controller stood in the far corner, next to Visser One, whose back was turned. Marco stood in the doorway, a blank expression on his face.

And that was when things started to get complicated.


	15. Chapter 15

In mammals, the part of the brain that processes smell is very close to the part that processes the emotional component of memory. Because of this, smell, more than any other sense, has the ability to transport us back to another place, another time. This is true of both humans and wolves. The smell of a long-gone grandmother's perfume can bring a rush of nostalgia that even a photograph won't; the smell of freshly cut bark can bring the memory of running through the forest with free, desperate hork-bajir.

Right then, my nostrils were full of the largely unfamiliar smell of electronics and metal, and the much more familiar smell of Marco. To my wolf nose, Marco's smell had always bothered me. There was something weirdly familiar about it. I'd long ago chalked it up to maybe confusing his laundry detergent with some kind of predator scent buried deep in the wolf's mind, or something. It was one of many little random details, the vast majority of which were probably meaningless. But as Visser One turned to face him, as I looked her up and down and remembered seeing her for the first time aboard the Pool Ship, things slowly began to click into place.

“You're one of the technicians that Visser Three sent?” she asked, her eyes flicking to his collar and then down to the rest of him. There was a slight sneer in her features. And her eyes were hard. Pitiless.

“Yes, Visser.” Marco seemed frozen. I couldn't blame him. I'd been terrified trying to fake being a janitor to some random yeerk.

“I asked for four. Where are the other three?”

“I, um. I think they had a problem. I think Visser Three killed them. You know... for doing something wrong.”

The sneer in her features became more pronounced. She shook her head. “So he sends me one, dressed like this. Sometimes I think that Visser Three's failures can only be the result of malice. Natural incompetence cannot possibly go this deep. But if he thinks he can damage me in the eyes of the Council of Thirteen by sabotaging this project, then he's a bigger fool than I thought. Let me show you the problem.” She walked over towards a specific console near the door. Towards us. Marco glanced nervously at the Leeran-Controller, but it stayed where it was.

What should I do? Marco couldn't thought-speak. Should I warn the others?

She tapped at the keyboard, but from my position under the desk I couldn't see what she was doing. I could smell her, though. Oh, yes. I could smell her, and the scent was familiar, and it was somewhat similar to a scent I'd been smelling long after our encounter on the Pool Ship. I told myself that it was nothing – there was only a limited number of chemicals given off by the human body, after all. You had to expect some level of familiarity.

“There's a problem with the axiomatic stressor...” the Visser paused for a moment. “Oh, I see. Obviously your host body is giving you some trouble. You are of course aware that your host body is the biological son of my own host body?”

“Yes, Visser.”

There it was. There was the similarity. I dragged up memories of Marco's behaviour to analyse in light of this new information... but no, there'd be time for that later. We were in the middle of a mission.

A mission where Marco was standing mere feet from an enemy more powerful, more dangerous than Visser Three. Visser One. His mother.

 _No_ , I reminded myself. _A parasite in his mother's head_. Because protecting the planet wasn't difficult or complicated enough already.

“You must learn to control your host more completely,” Marco's mother said. “My own host is in here creating an awful racket. But I do not let her weeping and wailing disturb me.”

“Yes, Visser,” Marco whispered. “I will try harder to control my host.”

I could smell the adrenalin, the aggression, pouring off him. It was something like fear, but different. Dangerous. I was surprised that the Visser couldn't smell it. But she didn't seem tense or wary at all. She spoke calmly, she smelled normal. Despite the woman that must be screaming, weeping in her own mind, seeing her long-separated son a slave of the yeerks, I couldn't detect a single physiological sign of stress.

Now _that_ was control.

Somewhere in the base, an alarm sounded. Loud enough for my wolf ears; it should even be loud enough for human ears. Was it Ax and Rachel? They'd not said anything... had I been wrong about Ax's thoughtspeak range? Was it... less under water, or something?

Visser One sighed. “Vala? See what that was, would you?”

YES, VISSER.

The voice wasn't thoughtspeak. It wasn't like the ellimist, either. But it was there, in my head, a concept of understanding and compliance that I knew came from the Leeran on the other side of the room.

Before Marco could move, before I could retreat, Vala had crossed half the room and stopped. Its eyes widened, its tentacles flapped. Words, thoughts, truth, erupted in my mind.

INFILTRATOR! HE IS –

The thought became a flash of pain and surprise as my teeth closed around the Leeran, about where its neck would be if it were human, just above the collar of tentacles. The pain was nothing compared to the hammerhead brain chips, and I paid it no mind. The few people in the room ran out immediately, except Marco and Visser One. She flinched at the pain but quickly stood, smoothed her skirt, and said, “Oh, that'll be it, then.” I didn't see where she got it from, but suddenly there was a Dracon beam in her hand, and one in Marco's as well. He stared at it as if no idea what to do with it or how it got there.

<Marco,> I said, <get out of here.>

I didn't need to threaten the Leeran-Controller in my teeth. Leerans didn't seem to have much in the way of defensive capabilities beyond their mind-reading, and I knew what my mind was telling the Controller. I didn't want to bite down. I didn't want to kill the innocent Leeran. I was trying to think of a solution, any solution, that would allow us to part ways peacefully. But if the Controller started to give away our secret...

For those few moments, I guess our goals were aligned, because the Leeran was silent. Visser One raised her Dracon, pointed it right at me, and I moved to get the Leeran between myself and the gun, but by then she had more targets than just me – Jake had appeared in the opposite doorway. Tobias swooped in above him. Marco took advantage of the confusion to fire at me, 'miss', and fry the Leeran.

<Are you even trained to use a gun?> I grumped as I fled under a desk. <You could have fried me!>

I can't read minds like a Leeran, but Marco's expression told me exactly what he thought of my priorities.

Beyond him, though, was something more worrisome – the doorway was filling with hork-bajir, all armed with Dracon beams. Five... ten... more than a dozen hork-bajir. Two dozen.

And three of us, not counting Marco.

<Ax,> Jake called, <Rachel. Progress?>

<We... difficulties... Prin...> Ax responded, his voice faint.

<Can you set the self destruct?>

<No.>

<Then get here, if you can. We're retreating. It doesn't look like we're going to win this fight.>

<We can do damage,> Tobias protested. <We can do some damage. Take out the equipment. Flood parts of the tower.>

<And have them bring the sharks in? Because as soon as they use those chips and see us all flinch at once...>

<We're on our way,> Rachel said, already sounding much clearer than Ax had.

“Their fight isn't with you, Visser,” Marco said quietly. “Perhaps if we leave this to Visser Three...”

“I did not ask you for a military assessment, technician,” Visser One snapped. She made a gesture with one hand, and suddenly, the air was full of blades and screams.


	16. Chapter 16

I've fought hork-bajir before. I've fought hopeless fights against hork-bajir, fights where they outnumber us three-to-one. I've been a bat guarding a precious crystal, trying to move between hork-bajir feet and getting stepped on. And it doesn't get easier. Impossible odds are impossible odds. A wolf, tiger, and hawk are only a match for so many hork-bajir.

Maybe I should start going into battle as a hork-bajir. Maybe Jara and Ket would teach me to fight, if I asked. At the very least I could cause some confusion when we were fighting against large numbers. Although going into battle as a peaceful herbivore seemed... well. Andalites were herbivores, too, I supposed, and Ax fought in his natural form all the time.

None of this really occurred to me while the razored army marched toward us.

At least they weren't using Dracon beams. Probably to avoid damaging the computers. Although since Visser One had armed herself and Marco without hesitation, the computers couldn't be _too_ vital. They were eschewing Dracon beams because we were well within their ability to deal with hand-to-hand, in which case, why have collateral damage?

So maybe that wasn't too much of a positive after all.

<Where's Marco?> I asked as I dodged under a hork-bajir's slashing arm and then leapt for its throat. He had disappeared, as had the Visser.

<Probably finding somewhere to morph,> Jake replied, crushing a hork-bajir knee in his jaws.

<Did you know about her being – ?>

<Do we really have to discuss this now?>

His tone told me everything; yes, he knew. Of course he knew. Jake and Marco had been best friends since they were little. He would've known Marco's mother back before the invasion.

Tobias came out of nowhere to slash a hork-bajir's eyes right before it had a chance to slash at my throat. We weren't going to win this fight.

<The door's open,> Tobias said, <and we need to flee. We might be able to catch Visser One.>

<Tobias – > Jake began, but he was already gone.

<He's not wrong,> I said. <We need to get out of here.>

We pressed forward. Through the hork-bajir. I felt a gash tear through my left side; I felt my tail get sliced neatly off. My head was wet with blood. Not my blood. Jake's blood. We kept moving, moving through the obstacle course of blades, and out the other side.

No time to check for injuries. To see how hurt we were would remind us that we were hurt. It'd slow us down. It'd get us killed.

I could smell them – not well over the blood and the adrenalin and the hork-bajir, but I could smell them, mother and son, fear in both their tracks now. We turned a corner and I smelled something new; I was able to skid to a halt before barrelling into the andalite and grizzly bear rounding the corner. They looked scuffed up, but not as badly as us. Ax had acquired a Dracon beam from somewhere and occasionally twisted his body to shoot behind them.

<This way!> I said, turning to follow the scent, and barrelling into yet another room.

Visser one stood there, breathing heavily, Dracon aimed at us. But she only had one Dracon, and there were five of us. Oh, she had a few hork-bajir guards with her, but they were unarmed. Unless you counted the blades, of course.

Rachel charged.

<Rachel!> Jake commanded. <Stand down!> But it was too late, Visser One's Dracon was moving, centering on her. We had no choice but to give her more targets. We charged. Ax was raising his own Dracon.

Rachel barrelled forward, several paces ahead of the rest of us, the obvious threat. Visser One aimed. Point-blank range.

Marco dashed into the scene out of nowhere and grabbed his mother, shoving her out of the way of the bear's charge and rolling so that he broke her fall with his own body.

“Are you alright, Visser?” he asked.

“Get out of my way, you idiot,” she snapped. “I have guards for that.” But she didn't sound angry.

At this point it became a little difficult to keep an eye on Marco, because we were engaging her hork-bajir guards. And behind us, I could hear the hork-bajir we'd left behind, approaching fast.

<I almost had her, Marco!> Rachel growled, swiping the throat of a hork-bajir open with one huge bear paw.

<She would've killed you, Rachel,> Jake pointed out. He'd left us to clean up the guards while he turned to slow the pursuing hork-bajir. I tore out the throat of the guard attacking me and went to back him up. Rachel turned to the Visser, who wasn't even trying to escape. The Visser held up one hand, and the hork-bajir stopped advancing.

“Surrender, andalites,” she said, “and I'll let you live. You must know that you cannot escape this place.”

There certainly were a _lot_ of hork-bajir.

Rachel grabbed the Visser and lifted her off the ground.

<Rachel,> Jake said.

<What? You think if we surrender now, it's gonna be easier to escape later? Even with Marco on the outside to get us out, we're on several clocks here. This is Visser One! We have her, we can kill her!>

Part of the wall behind Rachel exploded. Marco stood, trembling, Dracon beam held unsteadily. He'd missed her by a good foot.

“Release my mother, andalite,” Marco spat, “or the next shot goes through your head.”

<What?> Rachel said blankly.

<What?> Tobias said blankly.

<Perhaps I am making a cultural error,> Ax said, sounding confused, <but did Marco just say...>

<Put her down, Rachel,> Jake said.

Rachel put her down.

“I told you,” Visser one said, straightening her jacket, “you should try to control your host more completely. Now. This is what is going to happen. You are going to surrender, personally, to me. You are all going to demorph. You are going to follow my hork-bajir over there. I am going to contact the Council of Thirteen directly, and hopefully we can resolve this whole thing before Visser Three shows up to bungle it. Behave, and you will have my protection. Disobey, and my guards will cut you to pieces.”

More guards were arriving even as she spoke. More and more. It would be impossible to fight our way out. Our options came down to, one: try to fight our way out, and do as much damage as possible before being killed, and two: go quietly and hope for a better chance before we hit the morphing time limit or encountered a mind-reading Leeran.

Of course, that was when the giant yellow snake showed up.


	17. Chapter 17

“Visser Three, I presume,” Visser One drawled as the snake-like thing, thicker than she was tall and too long to fit properly into the room, brushed the bulk of its body past the hork-bajir. Visser Three was covered in bright yellow scales, and he had a pair of white fangs each longer than my arm. He looked for all the world like a cartoon snake. Except, you know, giant.

I didn't get to see much else because as soon as he appeared, the hork-bajir attacked again, and Visser One scooped her Dracon beam off the floor and started shooting.

<Well, I see you've made a mess of things, Visser One,> Visser Three said, amused. <You'd think it would be pretty easy to keep a base in the ocean free of andalites but you've somehow let them in. And they seem to be doing pretty well at annihilating your troops.>

The Visser's pronouncement was a little optimistic on our part, I thought. We were nowhere near annihilating Visser One's troops. There were just too many of them, half of us were already wounded, and if we did manage to win, we'd have the two Vissers to deal with. Impossible odds.

“It is more likely that _you_ let them in,” Visser One snapped. A Dracon beam sliced along my shoulder, adding the smell of burning wolf hair to the smell of blood. It didn't cut deep, though. I kept fighting. “They would have come from the island.”

<And yet we had no disturbances in the _far_ console room, just yours... and the other closest to yours. No, this looks like your problem. >

I leapt for a throat, only to be caught mid-air by a wrist blade and flung backwards into another hork-bajir. I was pretty sure a couple of my ribs were broken.

“You should have eliminated this problem months ago! If not for your incompetence and treachery, the planet would be unopposed!”

<No doubt the Council of Thirteen will enjoy hearing your excuses for failure. Perhaps you could explain to them how the andalites knew of this base at the same time.>

I sank to the floor. An elbow blade shot downward, and would have cut me in half if Jake hadn't severed the arm from its owner.

“Be careful what you accuse me of, dullard.”

<You'll lose Leera for us yet, you half-human fool.>

“Like you're losing Earth, even though I handed it over to you in perfect condition?”

<Guys,> Marco said, <get gills as quick as you can.>

<Marco, where are you?> Jake asked.

<We're not going to be able to clear a path to the tank,> Tobias said, <there are too many.>

<Oh, you won't need to clear a path. I can cover that. Just get gills.>

<Yeah, we're not really in a position to morph here,> Rachel pointed out as she disemboweled a hork-bajir.

<Rachel,> I said, <Jake. Get out of here and start morphing. We'll join you.>

Tobias and Ax were in their normal forms, and would only have to morph once. I was the fastest morpher. That meant Rachel and Jake were going to need the most time.

<There are too many for you guys to handle,> Jake protested.

<It won't be for long. I'll follow in, say, sixty seconds. Tobias and Ax flee thirty seconds after that. Give them fifteen seconds to get started and then Marco does whatever he's doing.>

<Marco?> Jake asked.

<I can do that,> he replied.

<Ax, can you time?>

<I will do so, Prince Jake.>

<Let's go,> Jake said. He and Rachel ducked out of the fight, out of the room. A few hork-bajir followed, but their main job was defending the Vissers. The Vissers who were still in the room.

The Vissers who were paying almost no attention to us, instead taking the time to trash each other. Politics.

One minute, I had to survive for one minute. I dodged a blade. Lost some fur. Broke a paw.

<One minute has passed.>

I got out of there. Dashed down a corridor, already demorphing, demorphing under my fur to heal without revealing who – what – I really was. Fortunately, most of the guards had made it into the room with the Vissers and pretty much everyone else had evacuated, so it was easy to find somewhere empty to become human once again.

<Thirty more seconds have passed. We are disengaging.>

 _Shark, shark_. My skin became rubbery and rough. My teeth split into more teeth, hundreds of tiny pointed teeth.

<Fifteen more of your seconds have passed.>

<Do it, Marco.>

<Now would be an excellent time to be able to breathe water,> Marco said.

I didn't have time to wonder exactly what Marco was going to do. I needed to focus. My arms melded into my body, my hands broadened into fins that crept up my sides. Something in the base groaned loudly, like metal under too much pressure. My legs flowed together into a single mass, a shark's tail. The base groaned louder, and I felt the whole room jolt sideways. My eyes began to spread out as my skull elongated to each side.

Just as water came rushing, torrenting in, gills opened up on my body. I gulped at the water and fought against it as it threatened to slam me into the walls, then used its flow and let it suck me out of the room. Hork-bajir were everywhere, struggling.

Briefly.

I searched for a way out, out of the building, and found it; a shattered window where the sudden change in water pressure had simply been too much. The others; where were the others?

<Is everyone okay?> Jake asked. We all responded. Yes. Yes, we were okay. There were hammerheads scattered about, confused, and I didn't know which were my friends and which were yeerk troops, but we were all okay.

Behind me, the tower rocked, cracked. Slowly, it fell sideways. It crashed down, down... right onto the rest of the base.

<What did he _do_? > Rachel whispered in our minds. Marco didn't answer; at least, not in thought-speak. But a haunting sound, a deep and perfect sound, crooned and flowed and reverberated through the ocean around us. It touched something in my shark brain; it was familiar. It touched something in my human mind; it was beautiful.

The song of a whale.

There was no more air in the tower, but if Marco had gotten a good lungful, he should be right for awhile. He rose from the wreckage, looking small against the long steel walls (and it is hard to make a whale look small), but apparently it had been enough bulk to crack the walls and let the water pressure do its job. We swam up, up towards the surface. But something was coming down, down towards us.

A giant yellow serpent carved its way through the water. A hammerhead started to swim past; the serpent chomped down on it and, suddenly, no more hammerhead. He twisted, cut right, gulped down another.

That was a problem. If I kept moving, I'd be eaten. If I tried to flee, he'd notice, and I'd be eaten faster.

His eyes, his big beady snakelike eyes, fixed on me.

And then on something behind me. He swam past; down, down, towards the rising bulk towards the whale that had brought the base down upon him.

Towards Marco.


	18. Chapter 18

There was nothing I could do. I dashed forward to bite, but the Visser wasn't close enough. He darted past, opened his mouth wide, and sank his fangs into Marco.

<Aaaaaaargh!> Marco cried. He thrashed about, and the serpent wrapped its body around him.

<Marco!> Jake shouted. Somewhere off to my right, a hammerhead changed course and swam down, down towards him. I swam down, too. So did others.

Of course, we had no idea how to fight that thing. Sure, we were sharks. But Visser Three was huge, his scales looked tough, and he was presumably venemous. It wasn't an entirely unfamiliar situation. The very first time we'd morphed in the ocean, we'd saved a whale from predators. We'd been dolphins, and we'd simply rammed at the vulnerable parts of sharks until the whale was safe.

But Visser Three didn't seem to _have_ any vulnerable parts. I bit at him, experimentally. A chunk of scale came off in my mouth. There was another scale beneath it. The Visser didn't even seem to notice.

<The eyes!> Rachel said. <He's got eyes!> She darted for his face. Somebody else joined her. Each took a side and headed in, mouth open.

Visser Three definitely saw them. He grabbed a shark in his mouth and bit down. Blood billowed out into the water.

<RACHEL!> I screamed.

<Two down!> Visser Three crowed. <One down my throat and one to _tethnak_ venom. I am told that it is an excruciating death. Four to go, then... Hmm... >

<What happened?> Jake asked.

<Is she alright?!> Tobias asked, panicked.

<No.. he...>

<I'm alright! I'm alright!> Rachel said quickly.

<Then who got eaten?> I asked. <Ax?>

<I am alright.>

It was a shark. Just a shark. We were all there. All okay.

Except Marco, who had two huge holes in his body, and was apparently full of poison.

<Marco,> Jake said. <Stay with us, man. You okay?>

<I do have these huge holes in me,> Marco said drily.

<Get to the surface and demorph,> Jake said.

Yeah, like we had a chance of pulling that off. Even if Marco could get out of Visser Three's grip, what if he shrunk first? What if he just concentrated the venom in his system? But without a solution, that musing wouldn't help anyone, so I kept it to myself.

<We need to distract Visser Three,> Tobias said. <Make him let Marco go.>

<Five sharks against that thing?> Marco said. <Good luck with that. You're better off fleeing. I'll distract him.>

Five sharks. There weren't five sharks, though, were there? Visser Three had eaten a shark just moments ago. A shark that wasn't an Animorph.

A shark that had been trained to attack, to kill, to fight as a pack.

Jake reached the realisation moments before I did. <Guys,> he said, <we need to get more sharks! Round up any hammerheads you can find!>

<Turn the yeerks' army against them!> Rachel said, realisation dawning. <I like it!>

Marco was still rising, carrying Visser Three with him. We scattered, the Visser's victorious chuckle in our heads. <Abandoning a comrade to his fate. So much for andalite honor. I'm sure you'll honor him and tell tales of how brave he was and make him a hero, but we know the truth – you are fleeing because you are cowards.> He sank his fangs into Marco's tail. Marco thrashed in his grip.

We didn't have time to banter with the Visser. We were too busy scouting for sharks. I found a couple, darting about in confusion, and headed over.

Then, of course, it occurred to me that I didn't have any way to tell them to follow me.

But the sharks seemed happy enough to follow anybody willing to give them structure and direction. I just swam like I knew what I was doing, and they followed me. I found a third shark, who ignored us, but a fourth joined. I turned back with my little group and swam straight for the Visser.

 _Snap!_ One shark disappeared into the Visser's fast, crunching jaws. But me and the other three took advantage of the strike to bite at his face. Somebody else showed up, with more sharks. _Snap! Snap!_

I got out of the way, but the sharks, the real shark, kept attacking. Their numbers were dwindling. And we were running out of nearby sharks.

<This collection method will not be sufficient for long,> Ax warned.

<If we can keep him distracted until Marco can get to the surface...> Jake muttered.

<At the rate he is destroying sharks – >

<I know, Ax! I know!>

<We attack, try to do damage,> Rachel said. <It's the only option. We need to keep him distracted.>

<Then what?> Tobias said. <Let's say Marco gets to the surface. Then what? He can't demorph with the Visser around. We can't handle him alone. And we know that snake can live in air.>

They were right. We needed a way to call the sharks over, a way faster than just grabbing anything we could swim to. We needed...

<The alarm!> I said. <If we can trigger that alarm we heard, they'll go to where the hammerhead tank was. Then when Marco rises through there...>

<How?> Marco said. <We don't have the alarm!>

He was right. For a second, I wanted to snap that we were telepathic, but he was right. We'd heard it once, with dolphin hearing. I wasn't even sure I could identify the sound. And I'd never tried to thought-speak a sound before. Oh, words were normally made of sound, but humans thought in words naturally. I couldn't thought-speak a sound to them. Could Ax? If he could, he would've said so. Surely.

<Okay,> Jake said, <get ready to attack, everyone.>

<You're going to get killed, guys,> Marco said. <Just run. I'll distract him.>

Visser Three had said that his venom was extremely painful. The fang wounds on Marco's head and body had to be painful by themselves. But there was no pain in Marco's voice. Just resignation. Just peace.

Pain...

I knew pain. The hammerheads knew pain. Pain was a universal experience, something every living thing felt again and again, something the hammerheads would connect sharply with experiences. At least, a specific type of pain they would.

<Guys,> I said, <I'm going to try something. If this works... I'm really sorry.>

I drew up the experience of having the chip in my head activate, of pain tearing through my body until I wasn't sure if I even had a body. Pain is actually kind of hard to remember, but since becoming an Animorph, I'd had a lot of experience with it. I dredged up those memories to help me, hundreds of forms of pain in dozens of bodies. My legs being ripped off by enemy ants. My tiny bat body being crushed under big hork-bajir feet. Dracon beams burning away my skin and muscle. The burning in my throat as I struggled to breathe through lungs that didn't work and gills that hadn't formed. My own arm-blades slicing into my gut, spilling intestines over the prone form of a refugee hork-bajir whom I had commanded to remain still. Jake's fingers in my hair, slamming my head against a table over and over again.

I knew pain. I knew the specific, all-consuming pain of the hammerhead brain chip. I imagined it activating, imagined it paralysing me, searing through my nerves and veins and the world around me until I didn't know where I ended and the world began.

I forced that feeling out. I forced that fresh, raw feeling into the ocean around me, a bright beacon of agony. I heard the screams of my own friends. I heard the screams of the Visser. I thought I saw him twist and thrash in confusion, but it was hard to focus because my friends were not confused; they knew the pain, they knew what I was doing, and they were joining in until my own mind was flooded by the illusion of their agony as well as mine.

It didn't feel exactly like being in pain. It was the shock, the memory, the fear of pain. But it seemed to be doing the job. Somewhere above us, the water was becoming thick with hammerheads.

<Marco,> Jake said, <keep rising!>

We moved up. And it was the water around us that was thick with hammerheads.

We lead the charge. We bit at Visser Three, we pulled at his scales, we darted for his eyes. We designated him a target. And suddenly, dozens of hammerheads decided that he was a target.

Visser Three let go of Marco, who dropped quickly out of the way. Some hammerheads followed, but unlike Visser Three, Marco wasn't fighting them, and they quickly returned to target the bigger threat. Just as their training would have taught them.

We didn't leave with Marco. We didn't want to lead other hammerheads to him. We headed off in the other direction, and circled around. The sharks continues their attack, ignoring the way the Visser snapped their comrades from the water. I sent them one last thought-speak transmission as we fled –the memory of comfort and happiness caused by the chip. _You did good._

It wasn't hard to catch up with Marco – he was swimming slowly and bleeding, a thick trail of coppery blood and something sour and alien. Venom.

<Marco!> Jake called as we got near. <Demorph!>

<Hmm? Yeah. Yeah, of course.> Marco began to shrink.

<Wait,> Tobias said. <What if it... concentrates the poison or something? What if it kills him?>

<We have no other options,> Jake pointed out. <Marco. Are you okay, buddy?>

<Mmm. Demorphing.>

<Do you feel, I dunno, poisoned?> Rachel asked.

<Feel like there are holes in me.>

<Visser Three claimed that the venom is very painful,> Ax pointed out. <And Marco seems to be having trouble maintaining focus. That is likely a bad sign.>

But Marco didn't sound like he was in any more pain than normal. ('Normal' apparently meant 'greivous bodily harm'. Sometimes I hate being an Animorph.) <Marco,> I said, <does it hurt?>

<Yes. Don't distract me.> His skin was changing, becoming human. Only then did I realise that we couldn't bouy him up like normal without lacerating him. Hopefully, he would be able to avoid drowning long enough to morph shark.

<I think... I think it's working,> Jake said, as Marco's limbs appeared. <I think he's going to be okay!>

He meant physically okay, obviously. After what we'd just seen – what we'd just done – being mentally okay wasn't really on the cards. Marco thrashed and struggled in the water while his human features melted into shark ones.

<So,> Tobias said, after a long and decidedly awkward silence. <Time to go home, then?>

<Yeah,> Marco said, his voice toneless. <Time to go home.>


	19. Chapter 19

Marco wasn't at school on Monday. I went to visit him afterwards. I checked that Jake wasn't there first – I didn't want to interfere if they were hanging out or whatever. But he was home alone.

“Hi, Cassie,” he said as he opened the door, looking tired. “Please don't tell me we have another mission right now.”

“No,” I said as I headed inside, taking care to make sure my shoes were clean before stepping on the carpet. Marco had moved into a much nicer house since his Dad had started working again, and he made a real effort to keep it clean and comfortable. 'Neat' was not a term I would ever have expected to apply to Marco, whose locker and schoolbooks normally looked like they'd been rescued from some sort of natural disaster, but his house was somewhat of an exception. There were even fresh cut flowers on the coffee table in the lounge. We both sat down in plush, fairly new armchairs. “I just... wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He screwed his face up and scratched at his head. “I feel like I can feel it in there. Poking into my brain. It itches.”

“I'm sure that's just your imagination,” I said, scratching at my own head. “They're harmless now, anyway. You did quite a number on the base producing the signals for them.”

“Harmless unless we want to morph insects. Or the yeerks happen to try a similar scheme using the same signals. Or any of us need a brain scan or something and the doctors – probably Controllers, in this town – find yeerk control chips in our brains. I hate having alien technology in me. It feels dirty.”

“To be fair,” I pointed out reasonably, “we already had alien technology in us.”

“Yeah, but that's good guy technology. And nobody drilled into our heads to help us morph.” He sighed. “That whole mission was a mess. A total mess.”

“Yeah, it was... we were not in a good situation there.”

“Not that. Not the mission itself. Us. Couldn't you feel it? We had no idea what we were doing.”

I blinked at him. “Marco, we almost never know what we're doing.”

“No, usually we don't know the details of what we're doing, as in the mission, because plans change when unexpected things show up. But we always know what each other is doing. We know where to look if you want to find Tobias, and what information to ask him for. We know who to duck behind and who to put forward and who to have cover our butts when we need to flee. But in there, we fell apart almost immediately.” He rubbed his temples. “I thought it was Tobias at first. Because he just got his morphing powers back. I thought having him able to do more stuff was throwing off the team dynamic. But I'm not sure that's the case. I think it was me. I'll have to focus on being more on point next time.”

“I didn't come here to talk about team dynamics with you, Marco.”

“No, you came here to chew me out about not sharing with the group and having a nice big group hug.”

“What? No. Marco, it's your mother. I can't say I understand, exactly, but I respect what you're going through.”

He glared at me. “I don't need your pity, you know. This is exactly why I never made a big deal out of it.”

 _Actively kept it a secret, you mean_. “Pity and compassion aren't the same thing.”

“I've never seen the difference.”

“If you want to talk...”

“I don't.”

“I know. But if you ever do...”

“I know. It shouldn't matter any more, anyway.”

“You think she's dead.”

He frowned at me. “Cassie, we were deep. Really deep. You felt the pressure of that water. And her major political rival was right there.”

“Yeah, but there were Leerans on that base. Amphibians. And Visser One isn't the type to not be prepared.”

Marco barked a humorless laugh. “I know you're an idealist, but do you seriously think there was even the slightest chance she could have survived?”

Of course not. “What I think doesn't matter.”

“No. I guess not.” He looked away. But I saw the wild hope in his eyes.

“I'll get going, then.” I stood up. “But if you want to talk.”

“You already said. 'Bye, Cassie.”

“'Bye.” I opened the door and stepped out into the afternoon. Well. I'd tried. Marco had always been one of the more difficult Animorphs to talk to, almost as difficult as Ax. Jake and Rachel could be winkled open, and Tobias could be convinced to talk if he didn't feel like he was inconveniencing anyone, but Marco's shield of humor and indifference was all but impenetrable. I was halfway down the path when he called to me.

“Cassie.”

I turned back. Marco was leaning against the door frame, looking embarrassed. He motioned me closer, so we wouldn't be overheard by passers-by.

“I have a problem,” he said. “My dad. He's... he's started dating again. A woman called Nora. Nora Robbinette.”

Wait. I knew that name. “The math teacher?!”

“My math teacher.” He wrinkled his nose. “Apparently parent-teacher conferences are incredibly romantic. Who knew. I wouldn't mention it, but with our school being Controller Central for some reason...”

I nodded. “I'll check her out.”

“Thanks,” he said sincerely. “Thanks, Cassie.”

Of course, we both knew what I meant. I couldn't watch Nora 24 hours a day. This would have to be a team effort, and that meant I'd need to tell the team. I couldn't keep his personal problems a secret; all I could do was make it so he didn't have to tell them.

Some help.

I took the bus home and headed out to my little box of notes buried on the edge of the forest. I double-checked what I already knew, arranging my notes on the team by date. I was so worried that Marco would quit, at first; so worried that he'd leave, and then maybe pull Jake away, and that I wouldn't be able to hold anyone else together. It was written right there on the paper, in my loopy handwriting:

_Marco – flight risk_

_Wants to protect family + friends/ war dangerous = tries to talk us out of it_

_Wants out. Will he just leave, or actively pull team apart to protect us?_

He'd changed a little while after we found Ax. I'd assumed that was just, well, Ax. Or that he was finally seeing just what was at stake. That he'd changed his mind. The date on the notes spoke otherwise. He hadn't changed after meeting Ax; he'd changed after meeting Visser One. But who wouldn't? After seeing the enemy wearing the body of their thought-to-be-dead mother, who wouldn't dig in, cling to the hope of seeing them again, of maybe someday freeing them? That's what had brought Jake in. And this was Marco's _mother_.

Now, I try to be an honest person. Even if I have to lie to others, and I so often do these days, I think it's vitally important to be honest with yourself. Reality is too important to hide away for fear of hurting one's own feelings. And since this is my record, I try to be as honest as I can here, too. I might come back and refer to this someday. I want it to be the truth.

So I'd love to say that what I felt, talking to Marco and then going through my notes, was sadness. I'd love to say that I wanted to curse the universe for tearing a family apart like this, for doing this to a boy who was giving his all to protect the ones he loved. I'd even like to be able to say that I felt the pity that Marco so desperately wanted to avoid. Any of those things would be reasonable emotions to expect from a good person.

What I felt wasn't any of those things.

And what I thought was... 'Good. He has a solid, indestructible reason to fight.’

What I thought was that Marco, who had so radically changed from our biggest in-team risk to an incredibly strong asset, had an irreversible reason behind that change. What I thought was that even if he lost hope that his mother was still alive – and hope is a very strong motivator – his hatred of the yeerks for what they did to her and to his family would be enough. And I told myself, I told myself that this was Marco, that this was my friend, my brother in arms who had literally shielded me from laser fire with his own body and whose mind had saved our lives on more than one occasion and whose humor managed to keep us going when I though the sheer terror of battle would pull us apart; Marco, who had destroyed the underwater base with his mother inside, effectively sacrificing her for us; Marco, who had spent so long trying to keep the remains of his family together and who had had the fate of the world dumped in his lap and who, despite complaining, had never given less than everything in the fight. And I should empathise with him. I told myself these things, and then I wanted to cry for him, I wanted to bring back his mother and make everything okay. But I couldn't forget that the first thing I had felt had not been compassion.

I shouldn't forget. Unpleasant truths are still truths.

I wanted to put the notes away and go look after the animals, or ride Midnight, or do something else normal to take my mind off the whole thing. But I couldn't. I'd collapsed, exhausted, straight into bed the previous night, which meant I'd already let the memories sit in my mind longer than I should. I needed to write them down. I needed to preserve my experiences in the base on paper, to reason through them in a form my own minds wouldn't simply rewrite later. I needed to relive the whole thing.

I picked up my pen. I pulled out some fresh paper. Carefully, neatly, I wrote the date along the top.

My name is Cassie, and I fight aliens. Aliens who chip away at our lives a little more each day. Aliens who were chipping away at our lives before we even knew they were there. And I knew that Marco wasn't okay. That I wasn't okay. That none of us were going to be okay.

But we had to preserve what we had left.

We had to fight.


End file.
